School bond architects ask for Orcas Island’s vision

Visioning.

It’s a corporate buzzword. It means the process of collectively bringing to mind an image that conveys a goal, to bring into focus on a distant target somewhere on the horizon.

Mahlum, the Seattle architecture firm tasked with facilitating the visioning process for new public school buildings, asked for help this week from school officials, staff, parents, and the general Orcas community in three separate meetings.

The first took place on Tuesday, Oct. 17 with a sit-down with proponents of sustainability including OPALCO manager Randy Cornelius, school board members, and interested parties. Two other visioning meetings took place at the school on Wednesday, Oct. 18; the staff met in the afternoon and parents and the public were invited Wednesday evening.

At the community meeting, Butch Reifert, managing partner of Mahlum asked for the heart and brain power of the Orcas school community with a visioning exercise at the staff and community meetings.

“We need to start big and work small,” Reifert said.

Reifert presented hundreds of random images spread on the floor of the cafeteria. Participants were asked to select them to answer to the questions: “What does success look like?” and “What is an ideal learning environment?”

The images were not of classrooms but of random scenes meant to evoke a feeling like a child jumping into water, a dew drop on a single leaf, and a family gathered around the table for dinner.

As school board president Janet Brownell explained, the community meetings were not about the physical details of the buildings, like the number of classrooms or the placement of windows, but more to convey a big picture idea to the public. The images and responses elicited intangible ideas about what the new school could be. Responses to the success and learning environment prompts included words like immersed, engaged, magical, and organized.

Mahlum’s current task is to produce preliminary materials that provide an understanding of the new school building project and the value of those buildings to the school community without the detail.

“To get a good building, we also have to understand place,” Reifert said.

David Mount of Mahlum explained the more information they can gather to understand the big picture concepts of the project, the better equipped they will be to encapsulate that spirit in sketches. The sketches will be used to communicate to the public what the project is when a bond measure is sought in the February 9 election.

Reifert explained the planned buildings would be built to last at least 50 years into the future, and asked the community to envision what they’d like Orcas to be in 2059.

Orcas architect David Kau has three children attending Orcas schools.

“I think these will be the most important buildings in Eastsound for the next 50 years,” Kau said. “It’s definitely a tough job.”

Green building practices, including reducing contaminants in stormwater runoff, reclaiming waste water, and water catchment have been discussed. Kau is happy to see the school community embracing these ideas.

“Many of the consultants have been involved in projects on the forefront of green building projects which makes it all the more exciting,” Kau said.

School officials are looking to their next task: passing the bond to make the building possible.

“The most critical for passing the bond is getting genuine, complete information to the community,” board member Keith Whitaker said.

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