Shenandoah Street Elementary

Overview

A comprehensive modernization with a pilot program built in

The Shenandoah Street Elementary project encompassed the design and construction of a new two-story educational building and lunch pavilion, as well as a comprehensive modernization of the existing administrative building and single-story classrooms — including a library, 26 general and specialized classrooms, a flexible makerspace and computer classroom, outdoor learning environments, and administrative spaces. The school was also selected as one of the pilot sites for LAUSD's Classroom of the Future initiative. Design engagement began in 2021, from day one.

The principal, teachers, the plant manager, and the office administrator were all part of the design process, alongside the construction and design management teams. Those conversations were essential for understanding the functional needs of each space before anything was specified — not just what the rooms would look like, but how they would actually be used. A full Lookbook was developed to present every proposed space to the school for approval before any quotes were finalized or procurement began.

Classroom of the Future

A pro-social learning environment that teachers could actually use

The Classroom of the Future pilot wasn't about putting the latest furniture in a room and calling it innovative. The goal was to design spaces where students take ownership of how they work — where seating zones, furniture configurations, and movement through the room all support different modes of learning within a single class period.

To help teachers get comfortable with the new furniture, I collaborated with manufacturers to produce short demo videos showing how each piece worked. Those videos ended up being useful well beyond Shenandoah — they became a resource for educating other schools on what flexible furniture actually looks like in practice.

The campfire zone — a gathering area for whole-group instruction with flexible perch seating and soft elements — gave teachers a way to pull the class together without desks in rows. Students could move fluidly between group work and independent tasks.

Classroom of the Future campfire zone with students gathered around the teacher

Design Approach

Five things that shaped every decision

Shenandoah had more moving parts than a typical modernization project. The new two-story building, the COTF pilot classrooms, the library, the flexible makerspace and computer classroom — each space had its own program requirements and its own group of people to involve. Keeping all of it coherent meant establishing clear design principles from the start and holding to them through every specification decision.

Color was intentional. The COTF team wanted the pilot classrooms to feel joyful — the kind of environment that signals to kids that something different is happening here. The orange accent wall came out of that thinking, and furniture selections were chosen to work with it: lighter tabletops, blue and grey seating, natural materials where the budget allowed.

The library was designed to accommodate a wide range of activities within the same space — full-class instruction, small-group reading nooks, individual students settling in with a book, and teacher-led meetings. That kind of flexibility doesn\'t happen by accident; it requires careful attention to furniture scale, traffic flow, and how different zones can coexist without getting in each other\'s way.

Student agency over fixed assignment

Every classroom received multiple seating options — traditional task chairs, perch stools, soft seating, and floor-level zones — so students could make genuine choices about how they work.

Reconfigurability without chaos

Tables and chairs are mobile, but specified with weight and stability in mind. Reconfiguration has to be something a 3rd grader can do safely, not just something that looks good in a sales catalog.

Durability as a design requirement

Public school furniture gets used hard for 10–15 years. Every selection was evaluated for commercial-grade durability and ease of maintenance, not just day-one appearance.

Bringing the exterior palette indoors

The architect's palette used bold colors on the building exterior. That gave an opportunity to carry some of that joyful color inside — the orange focal wall was a deliberate choice to create warmth and energy in the learning environment. Furniture finishes were then selected to complement it rather than compete with it.

Teacher onboarding built into the spec

Flexible furniture only works if teachers know how to use it. Demo videos, post-occupancy visits, and direct training with staff were part of the delivery — not an afterthought.

Library

A library built for the whole school

The library at Shenandoah serves the whole school — kindergartners for story time, older students reading independently, and full classes doing research. The furniture program reflects that range. Cluster tables in the main reading zone handle instruction and group work; softer perch seating near the windows supports quieter independent use.

The fiction shelving and display tables were specified with browsability in mind — low sight lines, face-out display capacity, and enough floor clearance that the space never feels crowded even with a full class inside.

Flexible Learning Workroom

Furniture that moves with the lesson

The flexible learning workroom was designed around modular indoor-outdoor furniture that students can reconfigure themselves. The seating shown here — stackable, lightweight, durable — can shift from a circle discussion to small breakout clusters to an open floor in minutes, and it moves between indoor and outdoor settings just as easily.

That kind of student-directed reconfigurability was central to the COTF pilot philosophy. The furniture isn't just flexible in theory; it's scaled and weighted so kids can actually do the rearranging themselves, which means teachers aren't spending transition time managing the room.

Students sitting on modular indoor-outdoor furniture in the flexible learning workroom

A comprehensive modernization with a pilot program built in

Flexible Learning Classroom & Adjacent Workroom

What the school looks like now

A pro-social learning environment that teachers could actually use

Five things that shaped every decision

A library built for the whole school

Furniture that moves with the lesson