Wylam Elementary School, Birmingham, Alabama
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The existing Wylam Elementary School, the second oldest building in the Birmingham City Schools system, sits upon a hill in the heart of the northwest Birmingham community of Wylam.

The neighborhood, originally home to European immigrants to the area who were employed in nearby mines, rose to become a thriving suburb and then entered a period of economic and community decline, which still persists today. The potential to provide a facility that might help spark the area into a new era of community awareness and development inspired the design team from Sherlock, Smith & Adams.

SS&A was first involved with this project in 1999, when Birmingham City Schools asked the firm to help evaluate a number of possible sites for a new facility. The intent was to combine the student bodies of Wylam and Baker Elementary Schools. After reviewing several potential sites, it was eventually decided by the school system to proceed with the project as a major addition and renovation to the historic Wylam campus.

In addition to the responsibility involved with designing a facility so important to the civic future of its community, the SS&A design team also had to tackle the difficulty of appropriate dialogue between old and new. This task was compounded by the very feature that made the original building such an important symbol in Wylam—its perch atop a hill. The site slopes, often steeply, away from the existing building in all directions. The challenge, then, was to create an addition that complemented the existing building while adapting to the surrounding severe topography.

The solution created two additions with a series of ramps which allows students to ascend from the floor of the gym to the first floor of the existing building—a total elevation change of thirty-three feet—without ever climbing a step or entering an elevator. Simply put, this allows the students and faculty to flow smoothly between buildings without the interruption of numerous steep staircases.

The main grouping of ramps curves around the site's northwest corner, where the larger addition intersects the existing building. This double-height ramp space is flooded with natural light from one side and playfully interacts with the media center and cafeteria around which it wraps on the other side. Despite the complex shape created by the site conditions, the building is still simple to navigate—remaining organized around one main corridor on each level. Interiors throughout explode with the creative use of a full spectrum of bright, fun colors.

The exterior of the larger addition alludes to the community's heyday using a contemporary interpretation of an Art Deco flavor and a series of volumes reminiscent of the area's mining history. The smaller addition, which houses the kindergarten classrooms, is of a more residential scale, so as to ease the school's youngest pupils into their academic surroundings while bringing the scale of the campus down to surrounding neighborhood homes. The building interacts with the kindergarten playcourt using two whimsical entry canopies suggestive of fun toy shapes.

Both Architect and Landscape Architect worked closely to insure the stately building remained an historic icon both in scale and in stature. A new grand staircase from street level to the door of the historic building serves to strengthen this image. This design process has been well received by neighborhood and school board leaders, and awaits funding to enter the construction phase.