The Old Donation School

Virginia Beach, Virginia

Built for $63.6 million, the state-of-the-art Old Donation School is located on a 13-acre site and is home to second through eighth grade students in Virginia Beach who are intellectually gifted in visual arts or dance. It has a capacity of 1,375. Virtually the entire 225,000-square-foot structure, designed by RRMM Architects, serves as part of the lesson plan for students. The architects envisioned an immersive learning environment with elements of the core curriculum incorporated into the building’s common areas, classrooms, and specialty-areas.

1717 Design was commissioned to collaborate with RRMM to develop curriculum-based architectural graphics that could be integrated throughout the three-story facility. After extensive teacher and administrative staff meetings and questionnaires, it emerged that the interconnected elements of the ecosystem was an ideal visual framework for encouraging discovery and unifying the building’s graphics — a water theme on the first floor, a land theme on the second floor, and sky theme on the third floor. These themes along with grade-level animal mascots were incorporated in the graphics, murals, and signage developed for the terrazzo floor patterns and window graphics. Core grade-specific themes such as systems, structures, relationships, change, and conflict were also layered into the window graphics in each wing of the building.