Architecture

Teton Valley Community School
Location: Victor, Idaho
Design Firm: Section Eight Design, a collaborative studio in Victor, Idaho
Designers: Emma Adkisson, Nathan Gray, Dustin Kalanick
Filmmaker: Trask McFarland
Estimated Costs: USD $1.65 Million for the whole campus, USD $330,000 for one classroom

Architect's Statement:

The Teton Valley Community School (TVCS) is a non-profit school in Victor, Idaho. The school is currently run out of a residential building located on a 2-acre site. Due to space constraints, the school has half of its students located at a satellite campus nearby. While TVCS is a place where children are encouraged to use their imaginations, play outside, express themselves creatively, and develop their own hypotheses and work together to solve problems, these makeshift classrooms converted from residential use, lack of space and an environment ill-suited for learning, impede students’ opportunities.

The new classroom design not only provides a better teaching space, but also extends the learning environment beyond the four walls of the classroom. This design demonstrates how architecture can be used as a learning tool. For example, the mechanical room that can be seen from the science lab informing students about the functioning the heating and cooling in the building or the movable panels in the classroom that allows to students to reconfigure their space as needed.

The design team held a series of workshops with students, teachers, parents and other community members to begin to decipher the requirements of the school, while simultaneously keeping the needs of the developing neighborhood in mind. This process led to the development of spaces that could immediately serve both the school and the surrounding community. During the course of the workshop the students were very keen on including the outdoor spaces into the learning environment reflecting the lifestyle of the Teton valley community. As the students grow up so close to nature, it was instrumental that the design responds to this requirement. Place-based learning is enhanced by working with farm animals, gardening for sustenance, and participating in local field trips.

Learn More: Teton Valley Community School