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The Metropolitan Center
Providence, Rhode Island
1995
“The Met puts into action everything that we know works for kids. It will be a catalyst for a statewide effort to strengthen secondary education.” – Peter McWalters, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education
To facilitate a community-based master plan for the future expansion of their downtown campus, the master planning process engaged the Metropolitan Center’s administrators, teachers, parents and students as well as local business, resident and nonprofit stakeholders from the South Providence community. Each of the four proposed new small schools is an individual, stand alone building, housing approximately 115 high school students. The schools showcase spatial flexibility, a concept emphasized through the design. To also serve as a neighborhood center, four small schools were centrally located within their community and placed at opposite corners of an 8 acre site. Common functions include a large fitness center with a gymnasium, aerobics and weight rooms, a rock climbing wall and a separate, building with a black box theater, radio studio, and video production area.
Maintaining the community-based theme of the master plan, the Met’s campus integrates local street patterns and the neighborhood’s scale by preserving the size and scale of existing city blocks. At the center of the campus, a newly created “town square” provides an outdoor recreational field, performing arts space, and a festival area for both the school and community. This town square is serviced by vehicular and pedestrian access from all four sides. Entrances to each building open onto the town square providing access to the gymnasium, auditorium, and each of the four small schools.
Design charettes with teachers and students determined how to maximize the benefits of the schools’ flexible wall and furnishing systems. Collaborations between students, teachers, administrators, and design professionals at the Met serve as a national laboratory for research in the design of environments that meet the demands of contemporary learning strategies.
