DRAW Collective completed the Franklin Regional School District Intermediate School with a strong indoor-outdoor connection in Murrysville, Pennsylvania.

The design team for Franklin Regional’s Intermediate School sought to blend the new building with the natural surroundings and preserve the natural riparian buffer and extend it through the interior of the building. The interior finishes were selected to embrace nature with a flooring pattern that creates a flowing stream to define the circulation through the building incorporated with Islands of green to define student activity or small-group instructional spaces.

The ceilings in the public circulation and gathering spaces are adorned with blue violets, buttercup, and milkweed, flowers that are indigenous to the site. The ceiling hexagons represent the hives of the bees who are the pollinators, who circulate between the flowers to maintain a healthy ecosystem.

An abundance of glass in all the student classrooms and instructional spaces creates a connection between the interiors of the building and the site. The building design included a nature trail as a part of the educational program that begins at the natural wetlands and stream on the lower side of the site and travels in to the forested hills.

The project was the result of a consolidation effort in the Franklin Regional School District that ultimately closed two, outdated buildings. The total project created this energy-efficient building that offers an outstanding, colorful learning environment that the third, fourth, and fifth grade students have embraced, along with an addition / renewal project for a K-2 building that shares the campus.

Design: DRAW Collective
Photography: courtesy of DRAW Collective