Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Envisioning A Future School Building

Our community meeting room was buzzing. Students, staff, board members, and members of the Eugene Mennonite Church whose building we share were assembled for a presentation by architecture students from the University of Oregon.

Students in Nancy Yen-wen Cheng's UO class were ready to show their plans for a future building for Wellsprings Friends School and the Eugene Mennonite Church. Both teams and individual students presented slides of their concepts for the building, ranging from an addition to our current building to completely new facilities -- some with multiple buildings -- all planned for our existing site on West 18th in Eugene. Along with the slide presentations, three of the five conceptual plans had dimensional models to view.

Each of the plans was well-received by the audience and the architecture students fielded questions about their individual designs (and applause for their efforts!). While a new school building is still in the "envisioning" stage, long-range plans for Wellsprings call for a facility that better serves our students, teachers, staff, and community of friends.

Our special thanks to the participating architecture students, Nancy Yen-wen Cheng, Associate Professor, and Christine Theodoropoulos, Dept. Head of the University of Oregon Architecture Program.

Architecture Student's Model



Student's model shows building addition (green roofs) next to our existing facility (light brown roof). The "stick" rising to the top of the photo represents our magnificent large cedar tree on the front lawn of the school. Also proposed was a reflecting pond shown at the new entrance along with a sidewalk mosaic that would be created by Wellsprings students (and added to each year by future classes).

###
Envisioning A Future School BuildingSocialTwist Tell-a-Friend