Environmental Learning

Echo Trail Middle School

This new, 1,000 student middle school serves a rapidly growing part of Metro Louisville. The site is a remarkable rural landscape complete with forest, fields, and stream, situated directly across the street from the nationally recognized Parklands at Floyd’s Fork. Great care was taken with the building design to honor this context in building siting, massing, and articulation, while the use of insulated concrete formwork and geothermal heating and cooling make this facility exceptionally efficient.

The school takes the shape of three very similar, barn-like forms, positioned in close proximity to capitalize on an existing plateau. The siting affords excellent visibility from the street and park, but also offers overlooking views from the interior to the remarkable surroundings as they fall away from the building.

The appearance of the building changes as one initially sees it from a distance, and then upon arrival. A custom pattern of four conventional bricks, along with accents of glazing and glazed porcelain tile, gives the distant impression of a weathered wood, only to reveal differences in texture and reflectivity of the individual bricks up close. The brick cladding literally extends through the narrow, glass-clad connecting corridors, further embracing the spirit of these pavilions having been historic structures.

Inside, the three, two story pavilions cleanly define the three grade levels, administrative offices and special teaching areas, and the gym/cafeteria support spaces. Within each grade, three team clusters surround a central, shared gathering space with breakout rooms of various sizes. A glass-enclosed technology learning space sits at the heart of each grade, while daylight devices bringing sunlight into the central support core.

The media center and social commons offer a variety of engagement with media, technology, and nature, as they strategically step down into the landscape. Small terrace areas support outdoor class use, as well as specific breakout space for art and media engagement.