Oakland Elementary School

School Description

Montebello, located in east Denver, feels flatter and more exposed than does Denver to the west. One can easily imagine the expansive and windy shortgrass prairie that existed here, now replaced with strongly repetitive suburban style housing. Oakland’s large, irregular site interrupts the flow of housing much like a jetty disrupting sea currents. A jetty controls and balances additive and subtractive action, transforming space through erosion and deposition. The landscape design takes inspiration from Smithson’s The Spiral Jetty, an earth sculpture in the Great Salt Lake.

Like a jetty, the school landscape seeks to demonstrate this plus/minus relationship. The whole site and individual parts of the playground become the protected areas, buffered and giving haven. Vertical and horizontal landscape elements speak to the causes and effects of interrupting flow, encouraging playground users to experience this on a visceral level.

The idea of a visceral, or experiential site experience permeates the design. Elements of the playground reinforce classroom lessons (reading in particular) while allowing the students to encounter the concepts in a non-didactic, experiential way. Likewise, art elements are closely and inherently woven into the design to transform them from viewed objects to integral components of the place, part of the experience.

Overall, the design of the playground stimulates play as well as catalyzes learning in the landscape; both are afforded through traditional play equipment and non-traditional, pluralistic elements. Inclusion of outdoor learning activities encourages observation and creative thinking. The design seeks to accommodate differences in gender, learning style, and personality through variation in types and sizes of spaces. The design strives to include art, culture, science, and math within a hands-on outdoor environment.