Indian Hill Exempted Village School District is a high-performing public school district in a suburb outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. Despite being less than 20 miles from downtown and surrounded by suburban developments, the village is quite rural and is filled with rolling hills, open fields and wooded parks.
The School District determined it needed to re-imagine their existing Middle School to better support current and future educational initiatives and learning pedagogies. The project involved a complete new-build of the school to improve overall safety and security, expand recreational and arts spaces, support STEM and project-based learning, and ensure the success of the school for the next 50+ years.
Primary goals of the newly built space included providing areas for unified arts programs, fostering creativity and collaboration, inspiring students and sparking curiosity, appealing to all senses and the whole student, and connecting to nature and the outdoors.
The new building features flexible classrooms, collaboration spaces, modern art studios, music rooms, and innovative project-based STEM labs. The school also included communal spaces for students to interact outside of the classrooms. A central hub named “The Village Green” is a space for students to gather, collaborate, and pass through. All other programs in the building branch off this center hub. “Neighborhoods” are used to delineate spaces used by the three grade levels in the building. Each neighborhood is home to one grade level, including core academic classrooms, a common space, exterior porch, lockers, and restrooms. Each grade is empowered to take ownership of their neighborhood and how they want to utilize their space. New, large, outdoor classroom spaces encourage faculty and students to take lessons outdoors and connect with nature.
