St Cloud Window

Improving Education through Smart School Design

10/02/2018

Improving education through smart school designAs schools look toward the future and find new and better ways to educate students, architects and designers are working to support these initiatives during school design, construction, and renovation. The rebuild of Dunbar High School, with the help of the SCW9000 curtain wall, but many of the also forward-thinking smart school designs outlined in AIA TopicA/Design Strategies to Improve Your Children’s Schools blog post into action.

Engaging the community

The SCW9000 acoustic curtain wall in the Dunbar High School auditorium creates a visual portal to the outside.

Use sustainable architecture

The auditorium curtain wall provides the flow of natural light and a sound barrier for quiet creativity inside.

Create spaces for interaction

The facility overcame the challenges of the site, to carefully engage the surrounding neighborhood through entry locations and views to connect the school and staff to the community.

Design holistic vision of learning

The curtain wall adds to the creative mixed-use, flexible learning space that can accommodate music, dance, wellness, art, physical activity, and creative learning.

The rebuild of Dunbar High School, a historic institution in Washington, D.C., not only was designed to engage the students and the community, but also pay tribute to the surrounding historic urban neighborhood through windows, vistas, and inviting common spaces.

Paul L. Dunbar Senior High School opened in 1870 as the first high school for African-Americans in the U.S. and has gone through several iterations before the current building. The vertical four-story design allows the building to serve 1,100 students in an urban area without sacrificing function or character.

In addition to the SCW9000 acoustic curtain wall, St. Cloud Window manufactures custom made, high-efficiency aluminum window and door products for new building construction, commercial window replacement, historic window replacement and projects where high-performance acoustic attenuation sets the standard. Not sure which high-efficiency windows are right for your project? View our full product line or contact us.

At St. Cloud Window we know every project begins with a challenge or an idea of what a building might be. We bring that vision to life with our distinctive design aesthetics, precision performance, and design-to-delivery support. Learn more about how our products can deliver on your design objectives and site requirements here. Then, check out our full line of historic replica and acoustic window products, and get in touch for more details about any of our high-performing commercial window products.