Community School Broughton STEAM Center

Architect: Christner Architects
General Contractor: BSI Constructors
Location: Ladue, MO

The Community School is an independent school serving children from preschool through sixth grade. It sits on eighteen wooded acres, where the original 1931 building was designed to look like a country house, resaleable as a home if the school folded. This addition, the Broughton STEAM Center, consolidates previously separate parts of the campus into one and gives the school a single secure point of entry with an elevator reaching all floors. The steeply gabled brick volumes read as houses, a response to the school's domestic campus character and its residential zoning. The gable is the project's leitmotif, appearing on both the front and rear elevations. It is then carried inside as the peaked window terminating the main corridor and the vaulted ceiling of the double-height commons. The exterior vernacular turns into the interior's big spatial event.