2021; Architectural Design
Growth and Reinhabitation
60,000 sq.ft. Elementary School
Downtown Montgomery, Alabama
The City of Montgomery is layered with the presence and absence of its history. It embodies a rich palimpsest of growth and decline, with solid remnants and scarred voids of its dynamic life. This concept seeks to create a dense, urban block for the City of Montgomery.
A broken frame, trapped in its own continuous state of decay, is grafted into the palimpsest of the city, relating to the layers of presence and absence. The frame wraps the street-edge with a symbolic facade reminiscent of old Montgomery and its history of growth and decline. Behind the exoskeleton, positive and negative space provide the private, programmed areas of the school. The growth of a new building is guided by the framework of the site and the city. The frame presents a defined urban edge to the street, bringing much needed density to the city and stitching the scarred site into the urban fabric. Positive and negative space occupy the frame, with vegetation, terraces, and interior space reinhabiting a skeleton of the past. The building grows organically behind the frame and presents a new future for the city.