As designers, we continually walk the line between visions of architectural beauty and the realities of project parameters such as code, program, budget and schedule. At times, perhaps especially in renovations, those parameters seem to reduce a project to a purely technical endeavor with little or no alignment with the designer's personal vision of architectural value. But by writing off even the most modest of design opportunities in a "technical" project, we abandon the very essence of our responsibility of designers: creative response to circumstance.

Project circumstances are myriad: circumstance of environmental context; circumstance of client identity and culture; circumstance of functional needs; circumstance of cost; circumstance of time available. The list goes on, comprising both the architecturally esoteric as well as the technically mundane. While a designer's personal interest may focus on the former, a designer can and should not forget that the latter are just as much design drivers, if not more so!

While limited resources may not yield high-concept architectural statements, the application of creative design thinking and articulation within those stringent circumstances can yield a design journey every bit as rewarding to the project team, and a design product that engages the very people for whom it was created.

This following short-form case study of the International School renovation and addition briefly illustrates just such a design journey, where what could have been taken as a stringently limiting set of "mundane" circumstances were taken instead as design opportunities, and where creative response to technical challenges yielded a design product above and beyond what the project team and client ever expected.

Be It Ever So Humble.
International School in Bellevue, WA comprises a grades 6-12 education program for students achieving high levels of academic excellence, and provides a curriculum spanning study of core subjects by all students in a small-schools environment. The school figures prominently in the Bellevue community, and the U.S. Department of Education named the program a Blue Ribbon National School of Excellence in 2004.

From inception The International School moved between various temporary facilities, until Bellevue School District found and approved funding for the renovation of a former junior high school to provide the program with a permanent home.

The 1960s building sits in a residential community near Wilburton Park. Designed and built with a low-sloped roof and partially hidden behind a hill to one side, the building added very little architectural substance to the community. Additionally, the former junior high school's spaces were ill suited to International School's programmatic, facilities and maintenance needs. After move-in, teachers jury-rigged spaces to meet immediate instructional needs, but the facility itself needed extensive upgrades in order to meet modern standards for warm/safe/dry conditions.

The project budget allotted for upgrades addressed the technical needs outlined by Facilities and Maintenance per the capital facilities bond to meet the warm, safe, and dry needs, and the addition of a new performing arts center (PAC), which was added to the scope with direction from the School Board. In theory, the project budget was large enough to incorporate these needs with a little to spare for discretionary scope to be added by the school itself.

If Only We Knew Then.
In our earliest assessment of the scope of work at International School we saw that project success depended critically on designing a new roof for the building, under which a new mechanical system and ductwork could be located and maintained without classroom interruption. Other criteria would factor into successful project completion (adherence to a tight budget, goal prioritization, schedule and phasing, and other such "typical" challenging circumstances that design professionals face on any given project), but we felt confident that each could be addressed with relative ease once we solved the roofing challenge.

In our interview for the project, our full design team (including both architects and engineers) reviewed the roofing situation with representatives from the District and the school, and discussed a potential plan that would get the overframing done, get it in the dry, and get the mechanical system up and running before the students returned for the start of school in the following year. As we saw it, a contractor would be able to work cleanly on a new addition and roof overbuild during the school year, with all interior school renovations occurring within the summer.

The technically focused discussion won our team the contract. Coming out of it we felt confident in our running start on making the entire project work within the client's goals.

It looked as though everything would fall into place, neat and tidy.

Through the Roof!
As we convened subsequent meetings and workshops with school staff, District Facilities and Maintenance personnel, the project scope grew well beyond the F&M goals previously cited. School representatives added programmatic goals to the list, and the team quickly found itself holding a list of needs far outweighing the project budget. Our presumptions began to fade away as we realized that we were now embarking on a demanding exercise in goal prioritization with a growing number of stakeholder representatives.

The project team had a responsibility to fulfill the original scope of work outlined by Facilities, Maintenance and the Board, but assumed the additional responsibility of fulfilling as many goals proposed by the school and community as possible. While a quick assessment of the scope vs. the budget led to the fact that there was not enough money available for additional scope, the team wanted to take a hard look at the required warm/safe/dry upgrades and find any creative ways around the stringent budget limits. In order to maintain clarity of achievable goals, the team organized the scope in a matrix under three principal headings: New Construction, Remodel and Maintenance.

Under each heading, we listed each distinct project scope element: Maintenance encompassed the building modifications meeting the warm/safe/dry goals, which were primarily mechanical and electrical upgrades, and which quickly grew to fulfill a desire to bring the building up to all current District standards; New Construction consisted primarily of the new 250-seat PAC, and a new boiler room required to completed the upgraded mechanical system; and Remodel covered requests relating to the programmatic wishes of the school, and focused on bringing the art classroom up to a high school level, adding different sizes and types of classroom spaces for teaching flexibility, and upgrading laboratories and the administrative office wing.

By linking each scope element to an estimated cost, we were able to create a priority matrix that assisted the team in determining just what was accomplishable within the project budget. This "scope creep" impacted not only the budget, but also the project schedule. With every single piece of the building now being touched in some fashion by planned upgrades, it became apparent that the proposed roofing and project schedule solution proposed in our team's interview was becoming much more of a challenge than anyone had anticipated. The work on the "interior" of the school beyond the roof mechanical and the addition pieces was quickly growing beyond what could be handled by a contractor during a summer.

The proposed project approach became invalid. In order to complete the project within the necessary timeline, the team needed to compose a detailed phasing plan.

In Form and Moving / How Express and Admirable!
Given the unforgiving budget, our team determined that we should not spend significant project dollars on phasing conveniences (e.g. a portable village in the parking lot or on the field to temporarily relocate classrooms). Such savings could be put back into the alternates for "below the line" priority items that would be permanent building upgrades.

The lack of additional temporary space meant that educators would need to move classes within the building to accommodate each phase. While such moves promised varying inconveniences to the teachers, staff and students, the school and community willingly chose to bear these out if it meant that it yielded more and better permanent building returns in the end.

The school leadership, staff and community really came together to determine a course of action in support of phasing construction during the school year. Together, they investigated alternatives for scheduling activities in fewer spaces to give considerable portions of the school up for construction.

The team found that two existing portables at the rear of the school, a gym storage room and a staff room were all cheaply converted into temporary classroom spaces. The library---which prior to this project served as an improvised black box theater---could be divided into two additional temporary classrooms. The school principal and head teacher worked with the staff to creatively schedule classes to double up rooms, avoid empty periods and use the commons and other flexible rooms where possible. Their very willingness to undertake such inconveniences ultimately resulted in the development of a successful phasing plan, and the consequent design benefits.

Just Going Through a Phase
The team found that the building could be divided into four distinct sections, each determined by one of four rooftop mechanical systems penthouses. A five-stage phasing plan could take advantage of each of these quadrants plus the new construction block, whereby in a worst-case scenario each penthouse could remain online until the new units and ductwork were up and running. Thus, each quadrant could be tackled independently of the others.

The creation of the phasing plan placed critical importance on maintaining the safety of the students where construction coincided with school year operations, and the quadrant-by-quadrant approach further enabled distinct zoning per those safety considerations. Phasing planning proved to be a project in and of itself, requiring detailed thinking on a technical level (relating to considerations such as systems, zoning, master schedule, etc.), but the design team took full advantage of the phased approach as an opportunity to find greater design potential within the scope of largely "technical" work.

What Will They Think of Next?
Although by no means exhaustive, the following examples illustrate how design choices responded to particular project circumstances not normally considered to be design drivers.

The Library
The library, also known as the Forum, had been used as a black box theater prior to the renovation. In project planning, it was determined that the space would change back into media center when the project was complete, and when the performance components of the space were moved into the new PAC.

Much of the work in this space was scheduled for the final phase of construction. But phasing considerations required that a soffit be dropped into the library to connect the main fire sprinkler and mechanical piping from the new mechanical/boiler room to the other side of the school.

Given that the soffit radically affected the library space, the design team approached its design to maximize its positive impact on the interior environment. Delicate articulations of form and surface treatment refined the soffit to heighten the dramatic impact of an experience of contraction and expansion within the room. Other elements included in the primary scope of work such as carpet and lighting were selected to harmonize with this spatial experience while complementing the design language being implemented in other spaces. Additionally, each of these design decisions respected existing clerestory lighting and a view to the courtyard, and in the end the "soffit-driven" design solutions developed for the library resulted in a more dynamic space than would have existed had the soffit not been necessary!

Classrooms and Corridors
The existing hallways were long and white with exposed conduit and classroom doorways at every 30 feet; they conveyed an atmosphere of monotony, and did nothing to showcase student work. The renovation improved this considerably.

Through the course of construction, we discovered that the drywall corridors did not go all the way up to the deck. From our first temporary certificate of occupancy onward, we worked with the City inspectors to retrofit the corridors to meet code.

The warm/safe/dry scope of work of mechanical and electrical systems upgrades and replacements---with penthouses and equipment sitting over the existing corridor, and connected to chases within the classrooms---touched these areas substantially, and allowed us to layer design enhancements into what could have solely been warm/safe/dry work.

The phased construction, touching only one quarter of the existing building at a time, allowed us to test-drive design ideas for the building. Phase 1 work, prior to occupation, became the benchmark by which we defined what level of finish was expected for all areas (particularly with respect to adjacent surfaces).

Modernizations creating new classrooms sizes within the existing grid allowed us to break the monotony of the even spacing between doorways. Articulations of ceiling height changes, surface treatments and colors, new flooring materials and tackable areas created a far more lively spatial experience.

PAC, Lobby Corridor, and New Entry
It is impossible in this short-form submittal to adequately convey the full confluence of work scope and programmatic and design articulation carried out for this zone of the school; yet its importance to the scope of design at the school warrants a summary inclusion.

The existing school building had neither a distinct entry, nor any sense of wayfinding to public areas such as the office. In examining the PAC, siting was at first selected principally based on allowing the addition to work as a separate construction piece, but the team saw that the addition could also work to create a distinct new entry for the school.

The corridor was designed to support student traffic at the key intersection of the parking and drop off areas, but also serves as a lobby and promenade taking the theater patrons from the ticket office onward to the theater. A "lantern" element conveys a sense of place and entrance at the exterior, and continues through the corridor to a sense of arrival at the PAC. A programmatic administrative office piece (the attendance office) was broken off and located adjacent to the PAC and the connection to the school, utilizing a new entry for the regular school day that was more prominent than the existing. After hours, this same office could function as a ticket booth for theater functions.

The interior finishes/patterns of the lobby further reinforced the design concept, with bold colors and patterns, and detailed to maximize the space for the daytime corridor/display, and evening performance functional duality.

For Further Study
Ideally, this quick summary of the challenges faced and design opportunities found at International school teaches that design opportunity can be found in any and all circumstances surrounding a project, no matter how far removed such circumstances are from the idealized "blank slate" realm in which many designers like to think.

It is our intention, should this case study be selected for further development, to elaborate on how design grew out of this project's stringent "technical" parameters (growing the three examples cited here, and adding several more); and also to examine the roles that each project team member played in discovering and making real these design opportunities, and thus show also that design is an exercise not conducted solely between the designer's mind and pencil.