W. J. Christian School, Birmingham, Alabama
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Schools across the state of Alabama were faced with a mandate to eliminate portable classrooms. Birmingham City Schools asked Sherlock, Smith & Adams to provide a design to accomplish this requirement at its K-8 W.J. Christian School.

It was soon clear to SS&A’s design team that the task was going to be more than routine, given the existing building’s steeply sloped site. Any addition was going to call for a means of negotiating the vertical distance between existing and new, while meeting a tight budget.

The SS&A team embraced the challenge before them, seeing an opportunity to enrich what might otherwise be an everyday assignment. The designers used the connector between the existing building and the new classrooms to portray the energy and excitement of learning. Here, a playful arrangement of various-sized windows allows natural light to fill the space, and creates a changing pallette of lights and shadows, while drawing eyes and minds toward the sky. A wheelchair lift beside the stairs in the space emphasizes the vertical dimension while meeting functional needs.

A basic material pallette is enlivened throughout with royal blue glazed blocks that tie spaces together horizontally.

The addition adds three regular classrooms plus a Band Room with a raised ceiling and acoustically treated walls to provide an optimal rehearsal atmosphere. The design allows for an additional two-classroom expansion in the future.