EDUCATIONAL

Herget Middle School

Aurora, Illinois

As part of an overall $70M Referendum, Cordogan, Clark and Associates is providing design services for a new K-8 Middle School. In a joint venture with Concordia Architects, the plans for the new Middle School- located on a 38-acre site in NW Aurora- incorporate a "Heartland" theme in keeping with the site's rural roots and the City of Aurora's West Side zoning plan.'

As part of the City's "Countryside Vision Plan', which focuses on open-space protection and flood mitigation, the new Middle School will be the first development within the vision area. To meet the challenge of the plan to take advantage of the natural topography of the land, the site design for the new school utilizes natural plantings and the existing contours of the land to handle water runoff rather than building an artificial storm-water retention system.

Incorporating the area's farm history into the design, the school resembles the kinds of structures you might see on a farm or at the county fair. The design offers generous daylight and maintains views of the surrounding landscape, including the forest preserve just west of the site.

The design of this 850-student school is intended to be very flexible and adaptable to evolving teaching strategies. The building is a single-story, brick structure with two wings, each with a distinctive use. One contains academic spaces consisting of six clusters of classrooms. The clusters will follow the "school within a school" concept containing a science lab and several classrooms, and will fit with the team approach to teaching currently utilized within the district middle schools. The new middle school contains classroom space shared between Aurora University and School District 129 professionals. The second wing houses administrative offices, the cafeteria, gymnasium, and art and music spaces.

Awards
Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB) - 2007 Award of Distinction for Excellence in the Design of Educational Environments

National School Board Association (NSBA) - 2007 Exhibition of School Architecture Grand Prize Winner

Learning By Design - 2007 Citation of Excellence (published)

School Construction News - 2006 DesignShare Merit Award (published)