Carmalt Elementary School

Graves  was hired by Pittsburgh Public Schools to provide comprehensive Architecture/Engineering design services for renovations to Carmalt Elementary. The existing schools' floor plans contained several open-plan "pod" areas: each containing six classroom spaces, miscellaneous space and common space. The goal of the project was to modify the existing building and building systems, as necessary, to fully enclose each of the individual classroom spaces and to provide fully accessible access and egress routes for each classroom, without reducing the available teaching area.

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Our approach was to use as many of the existing exits as possible for each individual classroom, to reduce the amount of common circulation space that would be needed within the existing pod areas. This resulted in an allowance for large (900sf) classrooms and provided a need for only 1 additional classroom per pod area. A total of 4 additional classrooms were needed, which will be housed in a 2 story steel framed new addition. The addition is 3,700sf and is clad with alucobond that overhangs a masonry base, which makes the second floor appear as "floating".