Bringing Life to Existing Schools

Join us as we delve into the transformative world of school renovations with architect Matt Kreutzer. In this episode, we explore how strategic design can breathe new life into existing educational spaces, turning outdated buildings into vibrant learning hubs. Matt shares his insights from impactful projects in Central City and Minden, discussing the challenges and triumphs of modernizing schools to meet the evolving needs of students and communities. From addressing common design flaws like plain exteriors and mismatched casework to integrating cutting-edge technology and creating cohesive campus environments, we uncover the strategies behind crafting spaces that inspire and engage. Discover how thoughtful renovations can revitalize a school's identity, enhance student experiences, and ultimately, shape the future of education.

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Episode Transcript

(Skyler): Welcome to another episode of Laying the Foundation. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Laying the Foundation podcast. I'm your host, Skyle,r back again today to talk about one of our K-12 topics, specifically bringing new life to existing schools, and joining me today is an expert on the topic, one of our amazing architects from our Grand Island office, Matt Kreitzer. Matt, you've been on the show once before, I think at least if not a couple of times now, so it's good to have you back, glad to have you.

(Matt): Yeah, glad to be back, it's exciting!

(Skyler): Absolutely. So you've done a lot of work in the K-12 sector with CMBA a ton of different school projects whether it be at you know the same schools or different schools all the above I know you've done a doing a lot with that so fantastic perfect person to talk to for this this topic so let's start with kind of general observation here sort of go from a broad perspective so when you go to a typical existing school one of the projects that you've done maybe or whatever the case what are some of the common design elements that really stand out in like the not so good of a way right?

(Matt): Yeah, I mean if you think back to your typical high school right, I mean more than likely white walls everywhere locker colors you know for some reason or another they came in four standard colors it was like maroon, teal, gray or sometimes they're painted and the paint's chipping off and things like that. For me, I grew up with lovely blue painted or blue lockers for some reason. My school colors are purple and gold, so blue makes perfect sense there, and then the next series of buildings, you know, it's typically lots of brick. You know when you think back to the very old buildings 1930s or older it's all brick and natural stone and things like that and then as you get into the 70s you know it's still a lot of brick but sometimes they bring in again a lot of muted colors one way or the other, but very rarely do you see any sort of color on the exterior of the building you know, one way the other, and then, you know, even for your main entrances it was really the only thing that really denoted a main entrance was maybe there's a little bit more glass at the main entry, but there's nothing that stood out that really called to attention, “Hey this is the main entry,” one way the other. So it's very little branding, very little color on the exterior, inside, if there was color, it didn't make sense like there was no relation to the school colors or anything like that, or if there was, it's very little one way or the other.

(Skyler): So, out of curiosity, was there a reason that you would often see these elements, especially with the colors?

(Matt): Yeah, it almost felt like you had like a set palette, so it was one of these like four colors. Basically, it comes down to what they offered for warranties back in the day and the colors they could get to offer the warranties in. So, maroon is one that we see a ton of for one or one reason or another but it was just a color that was available and they can make it last for a long time both on the interior and the exterior and so we see maroon lockers all the time we have a school district that we'll talk about here too that everything on the outside was maroon because that was the color that we could get, and you could get a lovely 30-year warranty for those metal panels and everything else basically.

(Skyler): Now, it might be obvious to some, but going into this idea of the lacking in branding and school colors and how that's kind of a missed opportunity. How does that affect the school's atmosphere or kind of the various elements of, you know, the school and growing up in the school and the growth and development of the kids that go there?

(Matt): Yeah, I mean, I think it's just some of it is just a lack of opportunity, and some of it was that they were dealing with the limitations at the time. Metal color only came in those five set colors, and everything else, and the same with thing with lockers. There were the five set colors that you could choose from, but it does lead to a more dull, it feels quote unquote “a little bit more prison” within the schools when you're not able to bring in those colors into those places a little bit. So yeah, that's really the focus of today is with these school projects bringing life back into these schools and creating a more walking environment for students both inside and out.

(Skyler): Absolutely! So, let's dive right in! Let's come to some of these projects. So, first of all, just preface, which projects are we going to be talking about today?

(Matt): Yeah, so it's funny the maroon we've talked a little bit about that color, but we have two school projects that we did, kind of big transformations inside and out for both, and both, for whatever reason, maroon was the color that was featured pretty heavily. The two projects are Central City Public Schools. We did a couple of different projects there, but one of the big ones was this large addition and renovation throughout the building. And then the other one was Minden Public Schools, and Minden on the exterior not so much maroon, but on the interior all maroon walls, and then there were maroon lockers everywhere. In Central City, everything on the outside was maroon. Central City colors are green, white, and gold. Minden's colors are purple, gray, and white. So, yes, maroon is a perfect choice for both.

(Skyler): Interesting, they must have been going through some of the same suppliers.

(Matt): Maybe! I mean, there's some similar timelines with both, but yeah, I mean parts of those schools were done kind of in the 70s, late 80s sort of thing, but yeah.

(Skyler): One of them saw that the other one had renovated and said, “Oh, we want ours to look like that, let's get maroon!”

(Matt): Exactly!

(Skyler): Fantastic, you’ve got to love that. Okay, so what all was going into... We can start with Central City. What was the full scope of the project that we were going into, or is this because we've done a ton of work with Central City over the years, too?

(Matt): Yeah, Central City's been a long-term client. We've basically, except for the original high school building, we have done all of their work for them.

(Skyler): Awesome

(Matt): So that's going back late 1970s or the early 1980s that we've been doing work for them. So they've been a fantastic client for us one way or the other, but again, we're somewhat responsible for some of the maroon in their building, and everything else too, which is kind of funny. Now, this was the latest project that we did was kind of a five-phase master plan that started with just some inside renovations for a life science area, but then the next phase was really the bi,g heavy phase. So we renovated science classrooms, did a big addition for admin commons, created a secure entry, and then we also did a pretty awesome industrial tech addition as well. That space is really awesome. If you think about your old wood shops and things like that, it's normally really dark, lots of noise, lots of dust, and things like that. So the goal of that with the addition was to bring in as much light as we could. There's not a lot of opportunity for that, so one of the ways we did that was by putting in glass garage doors, so we get nice 10-foot openings with all glass to bring light in. We opened up the ceilings and made things as light as possible. Expanded into areas as well to spread out space so we've got a dedicated woods area, a dedicated metals area, and then the big addition piece that we did was a fairly large and tall addition, but it's large enough that they can drive a combine into it and, again, we did this really large glass garage door on that again to bring tons of light into that space. So it's just a really awesome space for those kids to do all sorts of things.

(Skyler): Yeah, absolutely! I always wonder what it would be like for somebody in sort of a coastal, large city-type situation to hear an episode of us talking about these spaces that we put into some of these schools and they're like, “Why in the world are they doing K-12 stuff where they're bringing farm equipment in?” But people don't necessarily realize how important that is in the Midwest, and how big of an industry that is, and how a lot of kids want to go into that farm, and woodworking, metalwork, all that kind of stuff. It's kind of interesting to talk about some of the very “specific to our region” stuff that we use and put into our projects.

(Matt): For sure, yeah. I mean it's the industrial tech it's getting those career ready kids so they can, if they don't want to go into college or even they don't want to do a two-year college, they're going to be proud to go into a bunch of different careers, but even on the science side we're still doing amazing cutting-edge 21st century stuff there. With the science classrooms, we update their facilities that were done in the 1950s, and so you can imagine what some of that stuff looks like, but then they brought in a new technology piece: an Animatage Table is what it's called. So it's a giant life-size table imagine a cadaver on the building on a slab that's as big as this thing is, but then it's all a digital screen so then you can project on the screen a cadaver and you can cut it open and you can check out the circulation system or all the various different systems within the body, and everything else too. So that's a really cutting-edge piece of technology that we plan for as far as that science edition and everything else, which is really cool too.

(Skyler): That sounds incredible! It kind of feels like a healthcare version of like a Tony Stark Iron Man kind of digital display that you can interact with. That sounds really cool! That's awesome!

(Matt): Yeah, you can zoom in on the knee, and you can quote-unquote “practice surgeries” and things like that.

(Skyler): Wow!

(Matt): All sorts of stuff.

(Skyler): And this is going into a K-12 which is really exciting to see how early a person a kid can get started in these high education fields that you're going to have to take all kinds of college classes for, but how much you can prep for that thanks to technology like this that's being added into the schools, that's really cool!

(Matt): Yes.

(Skyler): Absolutely incredible! So, and then we did a lot of work, you mentioned on the commons and the front entry side, where people are obviously coming in and out of the school all the time.

(Matt): Yep, it's pretty important. So we flipped where the front entry was on the building as part of all this, but then the critical piece was obviously that safe, secure entry. Security and safety are kind of a number one priority with K-12, one way or another.

(Skyler): Absolutely!

(Matt): But then it also it became a branding opportunity as well so instead of a maroon entry with some maroon metal panels and things like that we brought in the school colors with the dark green, and the black, and the gold, and green, and gray and then did a huge commons edition as well. So, going from a very small commons where they're to fit the kids through there, we're doing three different lunches during the day. Rows of tables and things like that. We ended up creating a much bigger common space with a variety of different seating so kids can sit at a high top, or in a booth, or at a small table and reduce the number of lunches they had to have and all that came online, very luckily, right before Covid which was great because they were able to spread out and do everything they needed to do.

(Skyler): Awesome! Because, obviously, we've had a few projects that were going on during Covid, and it just added so much challenge to the whole process of things. So it's great that it came in just before COVID. Especially from a cost perspective. I’m sure that was pretty helpful.

(Matt): Yeah, absolutely. So, we started on some exterior changes to help get that branding and those colors into the school which is really exciting

(Skyler): What about interior renovations that kind of helped transform this school?

(Matt): Yeah, so with all of that the superintendent is an amazing client, does a lot of work on his own too of helping with projects as well, but with all that part of the whole master plan and everything else because this is a middle school and high school site was making everything seem cohesive and look like it was all done in a planned way as opposed to, “Hey you can tell that this piece was done oh maybe late 2000, this piece was done in the 1970s.” We wanted it to be cohesive and so we did a really good job with that on the exterior because, as part of that, again, we did the green at the main entry, but we also took away all the maroon coping and metal panels on the outside and replaced it with new gray and green and then we did the same thing on the inside.

(Skyler): Right.

(Matt): So we took our new materials throughout the building. So, some of that it's really simple updates. It's flooring down hallways, it's painting in hallways, it's replacing lockers, and things like that. I think for them, they had gray lockers already, so that wasn't a problem, and then even just simple things like updating the lighting in hallways, replacing old fluorescent lighting with new LED lighting, bring a whole lot of freshness to the space as well. So, it's really amazing to now talk to the superintendent about alumni coming back and being like, “This doesn't even look like the same school that they graduated from.”

(Skyler): Right!

(Matt): It was really funny, even, “Where's the maroon?”

(Skyler): Yeah, where's the maroon?

(Matt): Yes, exactly! But even on this project an interior designer that worked on the project, she was from Central City originally, and even her going back and seeing it now she's like, even though she worked on it she's like, “I still can't believe this is the space that I graduated from.” At the time, six years ago.

(Skyler): Wow, yeah, that's awesome. And I like what you mentioned about master planning and how important that is. People don't necessarily realize, unless they start looking at the multiple buildings that are on a specific project and saying, “This was made here, and this was made then, and this was made then,” and how different and spread apart those can be. And when you do the master planning like we do it right, it brings that whole plan together. We're not just putting little band-aids here and there on different parts. We're completely redoing things, making all of these renovations so that they all fit together really cohesively. So that's really cool. That and it helps when we have such an amazing client like Central City that keeps coming back to us, and they're like, “Hey, what else can we do? Let's do more!”

(Matt): Exactly!

(Skyler): So, that's always really exciting and great to be a part of. So, let's talk Minden Public Schools. What was the scope of that one?

(Matt): So, Minden. It was honestly a much smaller scope, but really the main project was just a new, secure entry, and then expanded administration space, but you know, the school really hadn't been touched since the early 1990s.

(Skyler): Okay

(Matt): So, they knew they wanted to do a refresh on the interior, and so we renovated hallways and restrooms throughout the building. Restrooms, as you can imagine, are over 30 years old and kind of smell a little bit over time.

(Skyler): Oh yeah.

(Matt): And the facilities themselves are old.

(Skyler): Old toilets and all kinds of things.

(Matt): And, Minden, their colors, again, are purple and gray, and their entire middle school had maroon lockers at the entrances into all their classrooms and everything else. There's a big maroon wall painted, and everything else, and it's like, “Why maroon?”

(Skyler): Why maroon? There's nothing like working on a lot of these older schools and eventually developing an absolute fear of the color maroon.

(Matt): A little bit. So, the superintendent down there, again, was really great. “At the end of the day, if there's no maroon in this building, I’m going to be really happy.” So, that was the goal.

(Skyler): It haunts my nightmares a little bit.

(Matt): Yep. So overall, again, it was really simple updates with all that. They had done a high school piece that, again, was kind of attached to the middle school, not that long ago. So we basically brought things up to their brand standards and flooring standards throughout. With the flooring, too, we updated the flooring from an old VCT tile to a new LVT. So, luxury vinyl tile maintenance-wise. With the VCT, every summer you’ve got to go through and wax and strip it and do everything else with that. The new stuff, there's none of that maintenance, and so on, a daily maintenance side benefits to doing these sorts of things. So yeah, they're really looking forward to not having to strip and wax floors this summer and everything else.

(Skyler): I'm sure the maintenance staff is absolutely ecstatic about that change. That sounds phenomenal!

(Matt): Absolutely!

(Skyler): So, was this all just part of a singular project? Or was there more?

(Matt): Yep, so the singular project was one we bid the project out in February, I think, something like that. So the contractor was on the bar in March, but had to wait basically until school got out in May, and then it was a quick hustle to get everything done over the summer, and get everything done in time. Overall, it stretched a little bit into the school year, but they actually did a really good job of getting things done really fast.

(Skyler): Absolutely. That's always fantastic. We got rid of all the maroon in there, we got new interior, new design, better branding, better color throughout the space which is fantastic.

(Matt): So, from your experience with both of these projects in mind, and any other projects that you might have been involved in. Like I said, when we do K-12, we're always updating some old project, bringing new life to it. What would you say, from your experience, are the crucial elements to consider when you're trying to bring that new life into these schools?

(Matt): I think more than anything else is trying to bring some color into those spaces and, again, life into these spaces. Not just doing blank, wide hallways and everything else. So, there's interest within the building, and there are places to go. Another project we're working on right now is York Public Schools and a new elementary school there. They've got really, really long hallways with absolutely nothing going on down them. So, the challenge, as part of that, is how do we break this up? How do we bring interest to these spaces, a very dead space…

(Skyler): Right!

(Matt): …in a creative way in order to bring some life and make these spaces interactive? So, some of that's through the introduction of color down the hallway, but then it's also, “Hey, how can we hang artwork in the hallways?” Or, “How can we do branding down the hallways,” and things like that? We are bringing some visual interest to all of this.

(Skyler): Absolutely! We’ve got to keep people engaged, and it's always interesting because people talk about, especially with hallways, it's more than just an opportunity to get from one place to another, right? It can be more, is really the key thing, and it's really cool to see what you guys have designed as far as ways to fill these spaces. I know Brent has talked about some ways that they brought some life to some higher education spaces when it comes to just long hallways that are just there to kind of connect one place to another.

(Matt): Yeah.

(Skyler): We've obviously done it with K-12 spaces where we've put these sections in where students can like stop and they can sit down and they can work together even, to some extent, depending on the space, and the ability to put whatever technology or whatever needs to be there for that, but it is really cool to see what opportunities can exist, and I think that's another element to bringing life to these spaces.

(Matt): Absolutely! With these spaces to find ways to introduce light, one way or the other. Again, we're really fortunate that there are some existing clear stories, so we've got natural light coming into these spaces, but then it's those additional functions as well. At Minden, for example, we had the existing vestibule. It was their old middle school entry, but it's just a dead open space that's only used when there's a game going on in the gym; people could gather out in the lobby, but it's like, what can we use this for on a daily basis with kids

(Skyler): Right!

(Matt): One of the things we talked about is, okay, well, we can capture the space now as a learning space. We can put furniture out here, and you can do group activities and things like that, even in your existing space,e without having to move walls and do everything else, but just repurposing these spaces so that they do more than just get you from point A to point B

(Skyler): Exactly! I love it! Couldn't have said it better myself. That's fantastic! Use the space, bring life to the space, make the space more than just point A to point B, and I think that's kind of the key thing when we come down to this this whole concept of bringing new life to existing schools, especially because some of these have been around for a long time. It is always kind of funny to see them like brag. They've got like a little name plaque, and it is great, obviously, it's great that you've been around for so long, but also let's talk about renovating.

(Matt): Yes! Minden had four of those plaques in their lobby, and we had to find new homes for each one of those plaques

(Skyler): Right.

(Matt): Which was also fun, the fact that each one was a different size too, but you know…

(Skyler): Yes, we love that you want to brag about having been around for a long time. It’s definitely something to be proud of, but there are elements of it that we should all want to see updated for sure. Awesome! Fantastic! Well, Matt, thank you so much for walking me through this whole concept of bringing new life to old schools, or existing schools. As somebody that's worked on a ton of these projects before, obviously you've seen quite a bit from the horrors of some of the older school spaces and some of the ways that they've had things set up to bringing that to the modern day, bringing that to things that we've done so much research on to update these spaces to be better for the student journey for the students themselves so on and so forth. So, thank you for sharing your expertise. I really appreciate it.

(Matt): No problem. Thank you!

(Skyler): If you'd like to find out more about the laying the foundation podcast, you can head over to any podcast streaming platform such as Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, and others. You can also find out more about CMBA Architects through social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Additionally, you can head over to the CMBA website at cmbaarchitects.com. If you're an architecture or design professional or an intern looking for an internship within those fields, please be sure to check out our website and click on the careers tab to find out more about what opportunities we offer. This has been another episode of the Laying the Foundation Podcast. We'll see you next time!