Ransom Everglades School STEM Building

overview

Flexibility and adaptability are the theme of a new STEM building that joins the campus of the Ransom Everglades private school. The innovative structure promotes team-based learning, providing open and collaborative spaces for students.

We provided structural design services to Perkins+Will for the 45,000-square-foot, three-story building, which features 10 classrooms with movable walls and furniture in addition to laboratories for biology, chemistry, earth sciences and physics. Students can utilize fabrication and maker labs, an outdoor roof laboratory, a multi-purpose conference room and a reconfigurable 200-seat auditorium.

highlights

• The primary building frame comprises CIP shallow foundations, CIP shear walls, CIP columns, CIP post-tensioned flat plate slabs, masonry partition walls and miscellaneous steel.
• A unique structural feature is a two-story, cantilevering, thin concrete slab stair that provides vertical circulation between floors in the center of the building. No beams, posts or hangers are used to support the switchback intermediate stair landings. Instead, the landings and stairs cantilever approximately 15 feet from the post-tensioned slabs at each level.
• The project targeted LEED Silver with the addition of solar panels on the roof.