School Description
Smith is located in Northeast Denver, the 35th block on Jasmine Street. Smith School was name for Margaret Smith, who was a teacher and a principal from1893 to 1941. Smith School was built in 1955 and opened the following year with students in grades 1 to 6. In the latter 1900’s, Smith became the Renaissance School focusing on the Arts as a way to achieve excellence in all the curriculum areas.
Architect’s Description
Project Description: The project included master planning and other landscape architecture services for the Smith Renaissance School of the Arts. The Master Plan embodied design ideas from our workshops with the children, from meetings with teachers, and from neighborhood and school community data. The final plan was designed to reinforce curriculum, stimulate imagination, speak to self and world, and to provide a community park.
Conceptual Plan: As a School of the Arts, Smith espouses that each student achieve personal development and a higher academic level through active involvement with the arts. Colorfully and creatively integrated murals, art pieces, and a perspective grid emphasize the arts in the new campus. A second dominant design element is relationship of self to the world. Multiple nodes along the “Being Walk” exemplify self-awareness and community connection. This metaphoric element is thoughtfully articulated to demonstrate the relationship of self to the larger society, encouraging empathy and respect for self and others. A perspective grid, compass rose, U.S. map, fractional devises, and sight word wall stimulate appreciation for art as well as for traditional academic development. These experiential learning elements create an atmosphere that unites knowledge and fun in learning. Traditional play equipment and park furnishings complete the design to function both for the school and neighborhood users.
Results: The Master Plan was used for grant writing, fundraising, and building community interest. Momentum created by the Master Plan led to full funding, through public and private sources, and actualization of our school campus design. The project was completed summer, 2002.
Smith Renaissance School
Construction Date
November 2002
Landscape Architect
GPD Land Design
Play Equipment Vendor
Play World Systems
School Garden Sponsor
Slow Food Denver
Community Garden
Master Plan
Vision
Artistic inspiration and self-expression are fundamental to Smith’s curriculum as a Renaissance School of the Arts. As the setting for this curriculum, the playground should likewise seek to inspire and encourage children. The playground should provide an impetus for imagination, creativity, and learning both in the performing and visual arts and for traditional student achievement in reading, writing, and math. To do so, the playground design seeks to evoke surprise, wonder, and possibility.
The playground will emphasize the ideas of self-awareness, community awareness, and joy in learning. Appreciation and respect for self will be demonstrated through words as well as through multiple spaces, each with a different tone and spatial quality. The way these spaces fit within the larger playground will be thoughtfully articulated to demonstrate the relationship of self to the larger society. Both types of spaces will encourage empathy and respect both for self and for others. Experiential learning elements will be intrinsically and carefully designed to create an atmosphere unifying knowledge and fun in joyful learning.
Overall, the design of the playground will stimulate play as well as catalyze learning in the landscape; both are afforded through traditional play equipment and non-traditional, pluralistic elements. Inclusion of outdoor learning activities encourages observation and creative thinking. The design seeks to accommodate differences in gender, learning style, and personality through creation of various kinds and sizes of spaces. The design strives to include art, science, language, and math within a hands-on outdoor environment.
Goals
- Promote participatory, hands-on learning through outdoor settings
- Create a campus appropriate to the curriculum of a School of the Arts
- Make a fun, peaceful place to be and play 4. Recognize the individual as independent and as coexistent.
Design Development
Construction Documentation
