The site, purchased by the school from an absentee landowner, fulfilled the desire to revitalize a property where they have watched businesses close over the years. Operating within a tight budget necessitated creative thinking, phased planning, and future-thinking design strategies. Measures such as working with an existing building shell, minimizing new materials and the selection of high-performance products allowed the new design to significantly extend the lifespan of a previously abandoned building.

The design for the phase one renovation focused on K-5 classrooms with space reserved to add middle and high school classrooms and K-12 shared spaces. 94% of the existing building shell has been reused in the design. The 6% that was removed from the existing structure introduced a habitable courtyard lightwell in the center to provide as much natural light and access to exterior views as the budget would allow while also serving as an orientation device and safe outdoor space for students. Corridors are generously wide to allow for programmed and unprogrammed activity in the hallways incorporating softer and smaller-scaled breakout spaces, nooks in the hallways with sustainably harvested aspen wood fiber acoustic panels, provide small group learning and reading areas adjacent to the library.

Using the existing concrete slab as the finished floor instead of the typical VCT tiles that the school had in its previous building cuts down on maintenance costs and expresses a rich material that hints at the building’s previous life. A richly colored wainscot-height zone of paint was an important part of the do-more-with-less design, as it softens the scale of the shell building and hides color transfer from the students’ uniforms (this had been a problem in the school’s previous space and required frequent repainting to cover up).

In addition to the adaptive reuse of the grocery store, the project prioritizes preserving the inline tenant buildings’ serviceability with a complete re-roofing effort, necessary parking lot repairs, and remediation where some large leaks had previously taken place. These efforts not only helped the charter school to maintain existing tenants but is paving the way to incorporate a health clinic and a food pantry organization. With a renovation cost of $215 per sq ft, the project took on an economic strategy to do more with less. As the heart of the planning concept, the building is designed around a flexible program with many spaces serving multiple purposes.

At the core, the design of Memphis Merit Academy’s new space is about providing a safe learning environment, while encouraging creativity and play. The design team’s goal was to provide a safe, secure, high-performance space that encourages creativity and play and doesn’t take itself too seriously. In the client’s words, the building is a space where students “don’t have to worry about anything other than being a kid.”