New York City

Battery Park City School

Teaching about building We developed an interpretive signage program for PS-IS 276, an innovative green high-rise school in New York’s Battery Park City.

The “My School, My Planet” program educates students in the sustainable approaches employed in its design and construction.

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The building incorporates a series of innovative, sustainable green features.

We worked with Dattner Architects, the NY School Construction Authority, and educators to develop an interpretive signage program to help students learn the story of the building.

To initiate the project, we held a series of input and concept review sessions with students, who were knowledgeable and enthusiastic participants in the exercise. They were better informed about this stuff than many of the grown-ups.

Understanding that wall space in schools is at a premium, we developed narrow, vertical sign formats to maximize space. A series of porcelain enamel interpretive panels explain the sustainable materials and methods used in constructing the school.

Informative panels in the bathrooms show the amount of water saved by employing water-conserving low-flow toilets and, as shown here, an explanation of the New York City water distribution system.

The wall panels, written and designed to grade-appropriate levels, discuss such topics as the design of the energy-efficient HVAC program, how the climate-controlling curtain walls work, and sustainable methods used to harvest the cork for classroom bulletin boards.

We wrote and constructed a series of illuminated in-wall displays to tell stories of the building's reflective roofing materials, the way recycled materials are incorporated into aluminum window frames, how walk-off mats work, along with...

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... the journey bricks make from North Carolina clay to lower Manhattan streetscape.

The prototype program was developed as a model for all upcoming New York City school construction.

Designers
Alexander Isley
Stephanie Trainor

Writer
Alexander Isley

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