Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools | Chapel Hill, North Carolina
The Alice Gordon Science Wing breathes some much needed life into Grey Culbreth Middle School.
Culbreth Middle School was built using the ‘open concept’ of the 1960’s and has suffered with inadequate science rooms and very little connection to the outdoors. In 2012, CRA was commissioned to design a science wing addition to replace the obsolete classrooms and reverse the closed-in feel of the school. The results are a direct connection to the outdoors, vital to any good science program. Each new classroom provides an abundance of natural light from the east facing curtainwall and the clerestory windows which face north or south, which are both controllable for audio-video presentations. All six classrooms share an outdoor experiment patio and an educational greenhouse. The bio-retention area, required for stormwater management, was made into a feature of the design and shall be used as a teaching tool by the faculty. The building is certified to a LEED Silver level.
