Caliber ChangeMakers Academy, Vallejo California Real Estate, Extension Design, USA Architecture Photos
Caliber ChangeMakers Academy in Vallejo California
Jun 28, 2022
Architects: TEF Design
Location: Vallejo, California, USA

Photos: David Wakely
Caliber ChangeMakers Academy, California
Delivered on an extremely modest budget, the new Caliber Schools ChangeMakers Academy exploits color and subtle design strategies to transform an otherwise unconventional but banal tilt-up concrete structure, while leveraging its creative potential as a community-building agent.

Serving more than 1,000 students on two campuses, Caliber Public Schools is a charter organization whose mission is to shift the experience, expectation and outcomes for students in historically underserved communities and provide them with a rigorous K-12 education so that they can enter a four-year college without remediation. The client asked TEF to develop a new, ground up TK-8 school to support anticipated growth exceeding the capacity of its existing school in Richmond, California.
Located on a four-acre site in Vallejo, the two-story, 65,300-square-foot school was built for $9.4 million, or $144 per square foot — less than half the cost of a typical commercial building. The restricted budget lead to its economical and restrained design: a compact reinforced concrete tilt-up with interior courtyard. A semi-transparent, two-story ?box?? delineating a lobby and second floor conference room?bisects the s...