Cranbrook Kingswood Middle School for Girls

Cranbrook School is one of the country’s leading college preparatory boarding and day schools. A National Historic Landmark, the campus is known for both its original architecture, by Eliel Saarinen, and its more contemporary buildings. The Kingswood Middle School for Girls forms an architectural threshold between a wooded grove and an open meadow, whose colors are reflected in the building’s exterior palate. The school is organized around classroom commons, one for each grade cluster, which also serve as portals to the landscape beyond.

In association with Ghafari Associates.

In addition to the architectural significance of the campus, the pedagogy of Cranbrook’s primary and secondary schools is known for its unique integration of art and science into the students’ everyday activities. Three distinct classroom clusters are separated by glazed commons spaces that provide flexible space for student gatherings and serve as performance spaces for drama, chorus and dance.

Outside, the school’s design acts as an architectural transition between a wooded area to an open meadow. The commons, classrooms, and entry lobby can be read as transparent voids in between the more solid classroom wings, allowing landscaped courtyards to bring light and nature deep into the building.

The sprawling 315 acres of the Cranbrook Educational Campus contain dense forests, rolling meadows, picturesque lakes, and formal gardens. The color palate of the exterior harmonizes with that of the surrounding landscape, making the building reside as a welcome guest in its place. The load-bearing walls are articulated with interlocking planes of glazed brick and burnished concrete block which help reduce the overall scale of the building. Copper cladding, used throughout campus, is applied in key locations to add color and texture.

Cranbrook Kingswood Middle School for Girls is beautifully detailed, appropriately contextual in a place where expectations are very high, modest in scale, yet intimate. The variety of shared common learning spaces connects directly to the exterior while providing opportunities to integrate imaginative ideas into the educational environment. This school builds on great traditions but creates a quality and life of its own Jury

AIA Committee on Architecture for Education Facility Design Awards