Ernest Lawrence Elementary School

Ernest Lawrence Elementary School

The commission for the Ernest Lawrence Elementary School was the result of a widespread need for new teaching spaces that emerged in the aftermath of the post-World War II baby boom. Richard Neutra’s design for this school was informed by the same principles that guided him in his earlier experimentation with educational structures. Like its precedents, this elementary embraced the outdoors. Built amidst an old orange grove, the classroom buildings were interspersed with garden courts that preserved rows of the original orange tree plantings. Wide walkways between the buildings formed a connective thread throughout the school and allowed for continued movement between indoors and out. In contrast to Neutra’s earlier school designs, this elementary features several more adventurous strategies, including the adoption of new and often cheap mid-twentieth-century materials in the post-war fashion. For example, the wide walkways were covered by corrugated plastic or metal. In addition, Neutra was influenced by popular interest in modular designs, and his plan allowed for future additions of modules of classrooms to be added at the end of the structure. In this period, Albert Frey was performing similar experiments with school design in Palm Springs, although neither he nor Neutra were entirely familiar with one another’s work.

Adapted from Neutra – Complete Works by Barbara Lamprecht (Taschen, 2000), p. 316.