Benjamin Franklin Elementary Renovation Earns AIA New York State Excelsior Award
The AIANYS Excelsior Awards program, celebrating its eighth year, highlights the best in publicly funded buildings, outdoor areas and public art across New York State and the professionals who support and advocate for them. The recipients were honored at an in-person celebration in Albany, NY on May 4, 2022.
Nine projects were recognized for an award in the categories of Renovation/Addition and New Construction.
The interdisciplinary jury evaluated the projects based on a set of three criteria:
Firmness: demonstrating design based on sound architectural and engineering principles and responsible use of public funds to achieve the maximum public benefit.
Commodity: demonstrating design that is functional and impactful, providing socio-economic benefits to the surrounding community and advancing the owner’s mission.
Delight: demonstrating design that achieves beauty and harmony through respect for the surrounding context, understanding and consideration of human scale, and satisfaction of user needs, both explicit and implicit.
The Binghamton City School District Benjamin Franklin Elementary Ground Floor Renovation project was recipient for a 2022 Excelsior Award of Merit. The Benjamin Franklin Elementary School is a stately 1920’s brick building that serves as an icon for its neighborhood atop a hill. But, save for a major theatre renovation in the early 2000’s, not much had been updated prior to this Capital Project to reflect changing teaching methodologies. The goal of this project was to create a fun, interactive environment appropriate to the age group and with it develop a “masterplan” for future application on the upper floors.
To put active learning on display and create a centrally located “gathering” space like the theater on the upper floors, the Large Motor Skills Room was relocated to the center of the Ground Floor. At the corridors, the designers also looked to bring a sense of the outdoors inside. Where the hallways had been long and relentless, with little visual or physical break across their length, a warming wood wainscot with an energetic curved profile was installed. The classrooms were renovated for optimal learning conditions and teacher/student/parent interaction, which is particularly important in this age group.
AIANYS President Pasquale Marquese, AIA, said, “These nine remarkable publicly funded projects deserve the highest praise for providing our communities with thoughtful, effective and responsible projects. Congratulations to the teams behind these successful works.”
AIANYS Executive Vice President Georgi Ann Bailey said, “Universally praised for their conscious design that positively impacts communities where we live, work, play and learn, the members of AIANYS’ and their respective teams provide impactful solutions, throughout New York State and beyond.”
