Join our hosts, Brian and Skyler, as they sit down with Architects Courtney Koch and Lee Beukelman. They discuss various strategies and ways they've converted schools from bland, nondescript buildings into spaces where children can learn and thrive in an exciting and engaging environment. Lee and Courtney love creating outstanding educational facilities, and through this episode, you'll learn more about them and their passion for this.
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Episode Transcript
Adam: Welcome to another episode of Laying the Foundation.
Brian: Welcome everyone. This is Laying the Foundation. This is our first episode of our podcast, and I'm excited to bring this to you. My name is Brian Crichton. I'll be your host. I am the president and CEO of CMBA Architects. So we're very excited to have time with you today, and hopefully you'll get a lot out of our podcast here in the future.
Today's episode will be Making School Fun with Design and Architecture with Courtney Koch and Lee Beukelman, both architects, K-12 architects with our firm, and they're going to be discussing how do we bring the fun to the daily lives of students within the schools that they get to work on today. I've got Courtney Koch and Lee Beukelman, architects here at CMBA. They're on our K-12 team. Good morning.
Courtney: Good morning. How are you doing, Brian?
Brian: Good.
Lee: Good morning, Brian.
Brian: How are you guys?
Courtney: It's fantastic today. We're doing what we love.
Brian: We love that.
Lee: Right there with you.
Brian: Absolutely. Wonderful. So maybe just give a little bit of background about each one of you, if you could. Maybe Lee, you want to kick us off with that?
Lee: Yeah. My name's Lee Beukelman. I've been an architect with CMBA for 12 years. It was the first place I went coming out of college and have stuck around because it's a great place to be.
Brian: Awesome. So kids, Lee?
Lee: Yeah. I have two kids, Jay and Sam. Jay is 10 and Sam is six. And we just finished up school and starting out the summer, so getting on summer routines.
Brian: Oh, fun, fun, fun. Definitely. All right, Court, how are you today?
Courtney: Hey. Fantastic. Yeah, this is Courtney Koch. I've been an architect for CMBA for the last 15 years, which doesn't feel nearly that long because it's fun doing what we do. It's great getting to work with the team we have, and every day is something new.
Brian: All right. So how about you, kids, what do you have?
Courtney: Absolutely. My oldest is a daughter. She's 11. And my son is eight. And we are in all of the activities that life brings at this age, from nights at ball fields and camps all day. And we just added a new puppy to the family, so life is crazy.
Brian: Wow. How is that? Yes, chewing on everything, I'm sure.
Courtney: Yeah, I'm too old for this, Brian.
Brian: Why did you choose to get a puppy?
Lee: Getting up in the middle of the nights again, huh?
Courtney: It's awesome.
Brian: Well, yeah, just like another kid, right?
Courtney: That's right.
Brian: For sure. Definitely always a challenge.
Well, today we want to talk about what you guys do on the K-12 side. Schools are a place that kids get to experience on a daily basis. And how do you kind of introduce that into their environments? That's what we'd like to hear from you today. So thinking about a K-12 project though, what do you enjoy most about working on some of those? They're very exciting, I'm sure.
Courtney: They are very exciting, and actually the most exciting part of it is getting to have a unique solution for every client we have, because there's never a one size fits all. It's always going to be unique to them. Even though we're still planning classrooms and where students are going to do most of their learning throughout the day, it's unique to see how each client varies on what's going to be important to them and what's going to make the most difference in their students and how they approach each day.
Lee: To work with that, it's also just getting involved with the communities. Even though schools are all different, all the communities are different, and at CMBA we challenge our employees to be part of communities. And schools are just a key piece to a community. So being to be able to be a part of that and seeing how they rally around the school when it comes time to passing a bond or something like that and seeing just that support and that excitement that comes from that, it's also fun to be a part of that.
Brian: Yeah, I think that's a great point. Schools are, a lot of people think of them just as boxes with classrooms, but schools do so much more now. I'm sure you see the communities coming into those facilities to use those.
Courtney: Absolutely, and even when we pick communities to live in with our kids, you definitely look at what the schools look like, what facilities you're going to be offered, and how that education is going to impact your own kids.
Lee: Businesses even figured it out, that that's a better way to get into their future employees by investing in their local schools and figuring out if they invest in those students, those students will stick around and be a part of their workforce someday.
Brian: So I know you probably don't want to pick a specific school that you enjoyed the most over your 10 to 15 years experience, but is there a part of a school that maybe you said I loved working on that particular part?
Courtney: I think where all of the students come together are the most exciting places because that's where the energy happens. We know things happen in the classroom spaces, but it's so fun bringing the different groups together and seeing how they interact with each other in order to create that community and give that space for people to come into and use a building, because it's not just for the students and the teachers throughout the school year. A building can be active the entire year and bring in different activities and events and creating that sense of place for them. I think that's the most exciting piece of it, and how they're going to put their logo or their own weave of their community into that space is what makes those exciting and active.
Brian: Very cool. Lee, any thoughts on your most favorite part on a K-12 project, a specific spot or a specific space, or even a specific school, I guess, but is there one that in the last few years you can think back on and go, "I love that?"
Lee: Yeah, I think just recently we got to finish up the Sioux Center High School, and it was an incredible project for me because it's where I went to school. That's my alma mater. So it was really fun to be a part of seeing old teachers, old classmates that are now teachers ...
Brian: I bet that was interesting.
Lee: ... community members. It was a good time. But then just being a part of the community, like I said earlier, and just being reunited with a lot of old community members that I knew growing up and still part of because that's where all my family's at. But kind of working with what Courtney said there about community, the challenge on that project was how we brought that sense of belonging all the way through the facility and not just isolating it to maybe just the one commons or the gym or certain areas, but how we really weaved it through the entire facility so the entire facility felt like a community.
Brian: That's cool. Wonderful. I can definitely sense that you enjoy what you do, the passion. Do you think it's possible to make school more fun with architecture and design?
Courtney: I do. I think that's absolutely something that we bring to the table, because anybody can have a classroom but until you start seeing those students use that space and how you can enhance that with the windows and the materials you're using and those nooks and crannies that students can find their place to learn and how they learn specifically now, is really what makes it exciting, because we can make that impact for the next 50 years on a building that we start today, and it'll enhance all of those students' experience throughout that facility.
Brian: Courtney, can you touch on, you talked about individual students and their wants, their needs. How do you get to know some of that? What is that process that you think about or use that might pull some of that out of those students, or even teachers, staff, community?
Courtney: We have a fantastic process that we go through when we start with any client, but specifically in the K-12 sector, it's awesome to hear from those actual people using the spaces, because until we know what makes them beat and how they're going to use those spaces, we can't plan a facility for them. But listening to them and having breakout sessions with students and faculty members, and understanding what's going to get them excited is really where we start laying that foundation, understanding what goes into it in order to give them their best outcome in order to affect their students and faculty.
Brian: Very cool. Very cool. So thinking about some of those design elements that are in a school, Lee, what are some key ones that you think about from, let's talk about kindergartners or first-graders. They're just coming into a school. So how do you make those little design elements important in their daily lives?
Lee: Yeah, I think when you start at that age level, it's bringing it down to their scale, and it's making it a place that they see as fun. I mean, you just walk around to a park or any place that's designed for children, it's colorful, it's bright, it's engaging, and our school should really reflect the same thing when those kids walk into those spaces and not be big, boring and flat walls. They need to be engaging. But as you graduate up into the upper levels, then it becomes more about choice. And I think having spaces that provide that choice for students, that they get to choose where they want to learn and just how they want to learn.
Kids, people like to lay down when they learn, read books. Some kids like to sit at tables when they read books or when they need to study. So just as you move forward, introducing that power of choice and options, along with just a strong sense of school pride. When we get into these smaller districts, that school pride, it just carries throughout the whole town, just how they work that into everything they do. And seeing that in their facilities just reminds them what they're a part of.
Courtney: It really is fun though when you get to talk to the younger kids, because we have a lot of schools that could probably have rock climbing walls and zip lines and slides. And it's just amazing, the creativity that comes out of them that inspires us to get excited about their spaces and what we can do.
Brian: Absolutely. I think I saw some pictures recently of a school that's in construction that's got a lot of color on the outside. You mentioned color a second ago and what those spaces should inspire for those students. Can you talk about that project that has that color on the outside of the building?
Lee: Yeah. That project is the MOC Floyd Valley Elementary School. That project was actually started during COVID and was fully designed not just during COVID, but during the shutdown portions of COVID. So having all those meetings and engaging that early on in that process. But the way that that design developed was engaging children. We developed an exterior of the building. We did all the planning and laid out the facility. But when it came time to really figure out what's this space going to look like for children, we took a black and white picture of our building, made it look like a coloring book, and we laid these images in front of kids and said, "If you wanted to see this building, what would this look like?" And they grabbed ... we just laid out all different sorts of crayons, pencils, markers, whatever it may be. And I think we all know where that went. They all went for the bright colors.
Brian: You just let them go at it?
Lee: They had options.
Brian: Whatever color they wanted.
Lee: We didn't tell them to do anything. We didn't even tell them they had to color it. But obviously, you lay a crayon in front of a kid, they're going to figure it out. But the images that came from that was just ... And these were six to six to 10-year-olds, so you got quite the range of ability there. But they used probably every crayon that was in front of them on the facility. So what we took from that was these kids thinking color, they wanted a space that jumped out to them and said that. So that led us to using some iridescent panels, that color shift, depending on how you approach the building, and really making it a fun place to place to be.
Brian: So as you move around the building, the colors change?
Lee: Yeah.
Brian: Really? With sunlight and ...
Lee: It shifts from a kind of green to a blue to a red to a purple and kind of in between there.
Brian: Oh wow. That'd be cool for a young child to walk into that. I'm sure they are going to look at that and go, "Wow." That's probably their first impression, I'm sure.
Lee: That's the goal we're going for. I don't think they're going to be the only ones. I think the rest of the community's going to say the same thing.
Brian: Absolutely. So thinking about the community also, Courtney, earlier you talked about some of that school pride, that imagery that comes along with it. And I know as a former student, I've went through elementary and middle school, high school, going back to my schools, that imagery, that pride is fun for me as well. So how do you think about that with community members?
Courtney: Absolutely. I think everything that we have to think about when we design facilities is how that's going to weave into that community and how that's going to be the representation of them, because we all know we take pride in our facilities and we take care of them because they reflect us. And if we can be able to enhance that as part of the design, that's going to lead them into the future to be able to have that pride in their space. I know my kids, I don't think we could ever move districts because they are so ingrained with what they're going to be for the rest of their lives that all of our clothing is purple and black, and I don't think we'll ever be able to change that.
It's just inherent when you start school that you take on that pride of where you're at. And when we can add that in through graphics and color and the logos, it just gives everyone that same level that they're all on the same team.
Brian: So is it fair to say that schools aren't the red brick buildings that they used to be 40, 50 years ago?
Courtney: Not for us.
Lee: Shouldn't be.
Courtney: And I really think shouldn't be that we need to reflect who we're working with and who we're working for, because these aren't our buildings. These are those communities that reflect that. And we're here to be able to solve those problems and deliver that for them so that they have the pride in what's there.
Brian: That's so cool. And how about the inside? I know we've talked about color and some unique pieces of it. But I remember going through hallways at school and it was hallways, and there would be doors into classrooms. Has that changed over the last 10, 15 years in your work?
Courtney: I think that's been the biggest shift ...
Lee: The biggest shift.
Courtney: ... is that it doesn't need to be just a blank corridor that has to move people through a building, that we can engage and activate those spaces to make the classrooms extend out into that hallway space, giving those teachers that room that they need to include breakout groups and meeting with professionals that come in to help with their classes, to give them all of that active space, that it's not just a transportation feature that you have to move around the building but a way to engage the entire facility to work as educational spaces.
Lee: Well, the process that Courtney talked about earlier, when we sit down and talk to those teachers, we learn just how much teachers use the hallway for classrooms. They're sending kids out into those hallways all the time for additional learning, testing, reward because they got done with their assignment on time, whatever it may be, how often they use those hallways. So why don't we make those hallways a learning space? Brian, you alluded to it earlier, that schools need space. And honestly, schools also can't afford to have space sit empty. So every space needs to somehow become a learning space. So it's an investment in many different ways.
Brian: So that circulation space is learning space is what you're saying?
Lee: We're seeing it being used that way, and so we're laying out our buildings to reflect that.
Brian: Oh wow. Yeah, that's definitely different than 30, 40 years ago, for sure. Awesome.
Lee: You saying you never got sent to the hallway, Brian?
Brian: Well, I wouldn't say that. I spent my time out there and on the way to the principal's office on occasion. So yes. Thinking about the Sioux Center school, that probably brought back some memories of those types of things for you as well.
Lee: Walked all those hallways, yep.
Brian: Definitely.
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Brian: Well, very cool. I think, again, your passion comes out for sure, but can you talk about how on a daily basis you get the reward of your work, right? We get down into the minutiae of designing buildings, but what other rewarding pieces and parts of that are important to you?
Lee: Well, it is getting down into that minutiae and carrying those strong ideas and concepts into even the details of the building, and making sure that the handrails and the guardrails even reflect that openness and innovation and that it's not ... we're not throwing standard building types and solutions into innovative concepts. So when you get into that minutia, it's taking it to the next level down and really implementing it all the way through the process.
Courtney: I absolutely love getting to work with all of the different people we have too on projects, because not only do we get to meet with leadership and school boards that start the project for us, but down and meeting with faculty and those students and the team we're working with, bringing in engineers and interior designers and the rest of our team in order to create all together. It's not creating in a vacuum, it's working together. And all of those unique people that you bring to the table creates those unique solutions, because like we said early on, you can have buildings that solve the problem, but how can we make those meet that community and those users and those students and really be fulfilling for everyone so that it is a project that everyone loves to be a part of.
The relationships are huge to me, and I feel that every day. I love problem-solving and that's really what brought me here. But it's the relationships with those clients that we have that become long term that we call after our project's done because we want to keep working with them, and being able to still keep that relationship going is really what gives me the excitement of every day.
Brian: So you try to celebrate with those clients basically long term, you try to have some connection with them?
Courtney: Absolutely. We actually, in most K-12 environments, have to pass bonds and all of my clients know that the day of a bond that if you send me a donut emoji by text, that means we won, and I will deliver donuts the next day because that is how we celebrate.
Brian: That's awesome.
Courtney: That's kind of our insight to knowing a bond was passed.
Brian: Those personal connections then?
Courtney: That's right.
Brian: So I guess thinking about, we've been talking about what's happened the last 10 years or how your work is going today, what's the future look like for ... how do we incorporate some of that as we go forward?
Courtney: I think the future's incredible, just seeing my own children and what has changed. When I went through school, like you said, Brian, things are completely different now seeing my kids go through the school. And what they bring home every day and what they're learning is a complete shift from what I did. And I think that's the most exciting part, that it's ever-evolving.
Brian: So they don't just sit and listen to a teacher lecture all day?
Courtney: Not at all. And my eight-year-old son is a true testament of this, because he is definitely hands-on. He's my Lego kid. So he has loved the shift to hands-on learning and that just deciding what's happening and being able to create that on his own rather than just getting that direct learning, because he has brought home so many unique things that under the surface is math and reading but because it's in such a context that makes it desirable for them to learn, they can remember it so much easier.
And I love getting to see the passion that they have for learning that's different than what I had when I was younger. I was very much book-focused, and I could do that. But seeing him and how he's handling things, I love how things have changed. And as the future continues to evolve, I think that's just going to help all of those students, whether you are on the path for direct book learning or on hands and skills and trades, I think the way we're seeing education now is helping all of those students move them to the next level.
Lee: I think you're going to see schools building stronger partnerships with businesses, with community colleges and really starting to cater their curriculums to those relationships to build on that, because I think the kids are going to start coming out with more skills, because knowledge is at our fingertips on the technology.
Brian: Yeah, just the devices we carry with us everywhere.
Lee: Yeah, it's going to be very skill-based coming out than probably when we came out of school. And so I think schools are going to work closer and closer with those relationships and make sure their students are equipped to engage at that next level.
Brian: That's so cool. Courtney, you talked about the team that comes together on a project. Are schools going to that as well? How is that being integrated into our design process?
Courtney: Absolutely. I think bringing everyone together and having those multiple voices there creates a better solution in the end, because if we're driven by only one decision and one person leading this, it's one vision. But being able to bring everyone together to push that and propel that in order to have a cohesive vision, I think that's where we see a lot of the successful projects come together.
Brian: Very cool. All right. Well, I think we're getting close to the end, but thinking about your work as we progress, we talked about the potential change or adjustments moving forward, do you see technology becoming very integral even at the young age level for students?
Courtney: Absolutely. My children come home with Chromebooks now, which is very new to us because that's not something that we did. And I think every facility that we need to look at, that needs to be included. It can't be something that's added on later. It has to be integral to those spaces so that there is no learning loss in trying to understand technology and integrate it. It's here. Like you said, we have the device in our hand that will give us everything we need in a second. We need to make sure that that's easily accessible to students and teachers so that their day can be fulfilled with everything they need to do.
Lee: Yeah, technology's definitely taken a shift. It's just understood to be a tool and is expected now. When we went to school, we had to learn how to use that technology. We had classes to teach us. Those classes barely exist now. It's just expected to be the tool that those kids use. So the facilities need to respond to that from a flexibility standpoint. And it's going to be expected to just be there.
Brian: Yeah.
Lee: And seamless.
Brian: I can see that. Absolutely. That it's a part of their daily lives, part of the things that they just expect in the spaces. So thinking about your work that's sitting on your desk right now, what are some fun things you're doing today in education design?
Lee: I'd say a project that we just completed, or it's going out to bid right now, is a school up in Chamberlain, South Dakota. And unique to that project is just how strong they wanted to pull out South Dakota history. So as you walk through the halls of that building, you're going to get the history of South Dakota as you move through it from east to west as you walk through. So just integrating that pride now, not only at a community school level, but now a statewide level and just making that available to K through fifth graders. It's just going to be part of their daily life, the history of South Dakota.
Brian: That's a beautiful place out there too, Chamberlain area.
Lee: It's a great drive in the morning.
Brian: Yeah. Court, what's on your desk today?
Courtney: We have so many projects in master planning, but I think the exciting thing about that is that all of these schools are looking to the future and how they can be prepared so that it's not reactive, that we're being proactive and understanding what those needs are going to be. It's exciting to think 20 years into the future. It's a little scary, but it's also very exciting. And those are where we're at in a lot of projects right now, is understanding what those needs are going to be and being prepared for when we need to make that next edition or that next building to give them that sense of pride that we've talked about and be prepared.
Brian: That's awesome. Being forward-thinking then for our clients that way?
Courtney: Absolutely. And so many of them start at that spot where they want to see where they can go. And we know that a lot of projects have to be phased because that's the world we're living in right now, is how can we be prepared for the next influx of students, how can we be prepared for technology changes as they advance? But we need to be able to help those clients have that path forward and that vision in order to be able to implement in the best way.
Brian: Thank you both for that great conversation. Really enjoyed the points that we talked about in regards to making school fun with design and architecture. So thank you for being with me today.
Lee: Thanks for having us, Brian.
Courtney: Thanks, Brian. It's been great.
Brian: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Thank you all for listening. This has been Laying the Foundation by CMBA architects. And of course you can find us on any other podcast streaming platform, website between Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, and so many more. Pretty much anywhere you can find podcasts, you can find us. Of course, be sure to check out our social media. We're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can see all kinds of cool pictures from a lot of the projects that we've worked on. And of course, check out our website, cmbaarchitects.com. You can see pictures there as well.
And if you're an architect or interior designer out there that's maybe looking for a job, or maybe a student that's looking for an internship, we highly encourage you to go over to the website where you can apply and maybe come hang out with us over at CMBA. And that's today's episode of Laying the Foundation.
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April 6, 2023