Photo Credit: Courtesy of Kurani Architecture

Society USA23. November 2020

How This Empty Office Building Became a School – and Maybe a Model for Many More

A vacant office building in California has been converted into a school as the coronavirus pandemic forced many employees to work from home, proving that such reuse projects may give empty commercial real estate a new life.

“There’s something about the way that schools and learning centers are currently done in most of America, where they feel so isolated and detached from the rest of society, especially in suburbia,” says architect Danish Kurani who specializes in converting commercial buildings into innovative new educational facilities. “When we do these learning spaces where we’ve done some adaptive reuse, it actually helps the learning get closer to reality. The kids are closer to the real world, they’re less isolated, they’re near adults who are going to work.”

The converted building was already subdivided, and with plumbing and electrical infrastructure. A few walls needed to be torn down, and former office doors and windows became material for desks and shelves. This environmentally-friendly form of development takes advantage of the space already built instead of erecting buildings from scratch.

Source:
Fast Company

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