Located off North Western Avenue in Edmond, Oklahoma, Keystone Adventure School and Farm is an arts-based preschool and elementary school for children aged 3 – 11, on a 15-acre working farm.
With a growing student population, the farmhouse that currently serves as the schoolhouse, has become constrained and unfit for purpose. AHMM’s proposals, divided across two phases, holistically expands the school, helping them provide for the growing demand.
The project consists of a new one-storey building located adjacent to the farmhouse, providing six new classrooms with direct access to the outdoors and a storm shelter, built over two phases. All classrooms have been designed to be flexible with large open spaces benefiting from natural light and more intimate spaces for individual group learning. Outside, the building’s main elevation, clad in red brick, extends the farmhouse and establishes a secure yet engaging boundary that meets its community through form, not fence.
The design responds to the overarching ethos of the school and its diverse intake. It provides an appropriate setting for a community where art, nature, life and learning are integrated. The new buildings are simple in form and volume, enabling them to be constructed in good quality materials, and reflecting the organisation, volume and material palette of the existing building and surrounding context.
