The Franklin School, Early Learning Center

Spartanburg, South Carolina

Firm

RDG Planning & Design

Client

Northside Development Group

Area

28,455 sq.ft.

Total Cost

$8,400,000

Completion Date

11/2018

Thomas Grady Photography

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Design Team: RDG Team: Ed Buglewicz – Project Manager, Eric Winkler – Project Designer, Bruce Niedermyer – Landscape Designer; Alvine Engineering (MEP); Britt, Peters and Associates (Structural); Blackwood Associates Inc (Civil); Sturm Consulting (Food Service); Harper Construction (Pre-Construction & Construction Manager)

The Northside neighborhood in Spartanburg, N.C., identified access to exceptional education as one of its cornerstones and reinforced this by planning academic campuses in the community. The Franklin School partners with the existing Cleveland Academy to provide a birth-to-fifth-grade campus. The architecture, with a multicolored glass clad form that rises above the building, acts a beacon in the heart of the neighborhood to define this place for young learners.

The Franklin School’s education program focuses on optimal brain and social development through creative, hands-on activities and play. The unique building design creates building blocks of formal classroom and programmatic spaces as well as informal spaces created in between these blocks. Together they provide inviting, safe environments for children to learn through discovery.

The architecture echoes the growth that occurs in the program as the exterior canopy stretches to the playgrounds, extending outward to the community. The canopy builds a relationship between the interior and exterior environments of the building to signify a space that encourages learning beyond the classroom walls.