Ransom Everglades School’s new STEM facility to emphasize flexibility

Ransom Everglades School’s new 45,000-sf, three-story STEM facility will be a flexible space with the ability to adapt to a variety of learning needs, according to new details released by Perkins+Will, the project’s architect. The STEM facility is part of the larger master plan for the school’s Coconut Grove campus.

The building will feature 10 classrooms with movable walls and furniture, maker and fabrication labs, an outdoor rooftop lab, rooftop solar panels, a multi-purpose conference room, and a 200 person auditorium. The facility will include laboratories for earth sciences, biology, chemistry, and physics.

Students working a lab space

“It will be flexible, adaptable, collaborative; a think-tank type space,” said Pat Bosch, Design Director for Perkins+Will’s Miami office, while speaking to Ransom Everglades parents at a preview for the new building. “This is not a static building.”

The collaboration will pour out of the building and spill into the surrounding landscape as well. The project will create new outdoor breakout areas adjacent to the STEM building and a new quad. This connection between indoor and outdoor learning spaces is an important aspect of the new facility, which is slated to be ready for occupancy by early 2020.

Ransom Everglades stem building exterior

Breakout space in ransom everglades stem building

LPA Architects conducted a post-occupancy evaluation, or POE, of the eSTEM Academy, a new high school specializing in health/medical and design/engineering Career Technical Education, in Eastvale, Calif. The POE helped LPA, the Riverside County Office of Education, and the Corona-Norco Unified School District gain a better understanding of which design innovations—such as movable walls, flex furniture, collaborative spaces, indoor-outdoor activity areas, and a student union—enhanced the education program, and how well students and teachers used these innovations.

Resiliency | Jun 24, 2021

Oceanographer John Englander talks resiliency and buildings [new on HorizonTV]

New on HorizonTV, oceanographer John Englander discusses his latest book, which warns that, regardless of resilience efforts, sea levels will rise by meters in the coming decades. Adaptation, he says, is the key to future building design and construction.