Woolpert Wins National Design Honor for Barkley Elementary School

Woolpert was awarded Learning By Design's Outstanding Project Award for Barkley Elementary School in Fort Campbell, Ky. The school was recognized for its architectural and interior design, and for having "benchmark type attributes worthy of imitation," in the magazine's spring 2018 edition.

Completed in August 2017, Barkley Elementary School was one of the first schools designed under the Department of Defense Education Activity's (DoDEA) 21st-century education charter, which seeks to provide modern learning environments to facilitate a wide range of educational and instructional techniques.

The school houses 740 students in approximately 142,000 square feet. The Woolpert design team incorporated multiple elements that support 21st-century education philosophies, including designing flexible and adaptable spaces and multi-modal learning areas, harvesting natural lighting, utilizing a geothermal HVAC system, employing a thermal envelope to boost insulation performance and using solar energy for water heating. The design provides students with the opportunity to interact with the building's multiple sustainable systems and enables the building to be used as a teaching tool.

The school replaced its 1955 predecessor with construction materials and high-performing systems that consume one-third of the energy of comparable buildings. The facility earned LEED Silver certification in 2017.

For this award, Learning By Design's jury of five architects and end users scored projects on six measures: innovation, community need, interior design, sustainability, functional design and 21st-century learning. The jury lauded Barkley's strong use of the prototype to test learning environment design principles, use of learning communities and larger group instructions in the hallway.

"(For) 21st-century learning: Nice development of learning neighborhoods; operable glass partitions between (classrooms) and learning hubs give each teaching community nice flexibility in how they teach," the panel noted. "Classrooms appear highly flexible-nice palette of furniture. Appreciate the sensitivity to creating a walkable community."

This honor was the most recent earned by the school, which also has been awarded design and building honors by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Chief of Engineers and American School and University.

About Woolpert
Woolpert is the fastest growing architecture, engineering and geospatial (AEG) firm in the country, delivering value to clients in all 50 states and around the world by strategically blending engineering excellence with leading-edge technology and geospatial applications. With a dynamic R&D department, Woolpert works with inventive business partners such as Google and Esri; operates a fleet of planes, sensors and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS); and continually pushes industry boundaries by working with advanced water technologies, asset management, building information modeling (BIM) and sustainable design. Woolpert's mission is to help its clients progress and become more progressive. For over 100 years and with 25 offices across the U.S., Woolpert serves federal, state and local governments; private and public companies and universities; energy and transportation departments; and the U.S. Armed Forces. For more information, visit woolpert.com or call 937-531-1258.

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