2015 AL Design Awards: Henderson-Hopkins School, Baltimore, Md.

Good design matters, especially when its efforts are focused on traditionally neglected communities. Such is the case with Middle East Baltimore, one of Baltimore’s most crime-ridden and poverty-stricken districts. But all that is hopefully starting to change thanks to the Henderson-Hopkins School, the first new public school to be built in the city in 30 years.

The school breathes new life into the community, both literally and figuratively, with an early childcare center, a school, and shared community and recreational spaces. The shape of the building embraces progressive education models with different modules creating flexible learning spaces that can adapt to children’s needs as they grow up. The lighting solutions follow suit with a contemporary design response to match the architecture, while still providing the necessary robustness required to address vandalism and public safety concerns.

Collington Commons, an extension of the existing street, is the school’s main exterior public space. Fourteen-foot-tall pole lights line the area and are outfitted with low-brightness T5 refractors. Additionally, full-cutoff LED area luminaires are wall-mounted in perimeter open spaces to provide the required light levels without overpowering the illumination from those pole luminaires. At the building entry, vertical surfaces and the textured masonry walls are lit with linear LED wall grazers. A translucent polycarbonate light box above the adjacent architectural volume is backlit with T5 lamps.

Inside, electric lighting solutions are coupled with daylight harvesting to create a bright, open environment and to maximize energy efficiency. Specified in 2010, T5 and T5HO lamps were selected for the majority of the interior spaces in order to meet energy requirements and to establish an easy-to-maintain luminaire equipment list. Cable-mounted T5 luminaires with high-performance micro-prismatic lenses are used in the classrooms.