It is never too late to go back to school. r.o.i. Design has been working with Robert Doornbos at RMD Architects, creating interiors for some of the charter schools he has designed in the last year.
Our experience with Charter Schools teaches us that they appear to have highly passionate teams, with high academic goals for a focused community population. They care deeply about how their school environment looks and feels, and based on available budget, really want to make their spaces “A+”
Black River Charter School, Holland, MI
This is where we met RMD Architects. The board engaged us to work alongside him and the board, to assist in the selection and coordination of finishes. This is also a Montessori school which had a criteria that all the finishes be calm, orderly and like home. Our favorite detail in this project was the accenting of the carpet in the classrooms to aid in organizing space for “lining up”, or just calling out areas. There were three color schemes, one for kindergarten, one for lower elementary and one for upper elementary.
Macon Charter School, Macon, GA
© Triangle Associates
© Triangle Associates
Culturally, this school wanted to embrace a global diversity and to make sure the interior could appeal to wide variety of students and families. Our favorite details here was the use of colors that we described as global cuisine, colors that naturally resonated with people as rich and flavorful: Eggplant, Saffron, Palm and Tomato. Then we used those colors in classic patterns in flooring and walls. Those patterns could be traced back to civilization 2000 years ago and could be seen just as decoration, or teaching tools. Through the course of the design we were informed that James Brown went to school in Macon, GA so we wanted to make sure everyone would “feel good”!
This project was a design-build project lead by Triangle Inc. in Grand Rapids, MI.
Northeast Academy, Minneapolis, MN
This community was growing quickly and expanding its program. They were moving into a larger school that needed to be refreshed, remodeled and delivered in less than five months. They moved in August 20, 2016! Our efforts focused on carpet and paint. Northeast wanted all the corridors to be carpeted and because there was little opportunity for other areas of interest, we created three to four modular carpet patterns that we repeated in different color ways. We also created tile patterns for entries and cafeteria. They will be remodeling another floor in the coming year, and hopefully, we will be able to go back and execute some wall accents and graphics as well.