Douglass Elementary School

Douglass Elementary School replaces a well-worn building on the same beloved site in east Boulder County, reimagining it for 21st-century learning while preserving the warmth and strong sense of community — the Douglass Dolphins — the school is known for. One of five new schools funded by Boulder Valley School District’s landmark 2014 bond, Douglass is organized around a generous central commons the old building never had: a single place where the whole school can gather, perform, and eat, and a flexible hub from which learning spills out through the day.

Beyond the commons, the school is arranged into Learning Communities — clusters of Learning Studios paired with teacher collaboration rooms, small-group and breakout spaces, and a shared, flexible commons of their own. A single-story early-childhood and main wing joins a two-story learning wing, so younger and older students each have spaces scaled to them. A library and Curiosity Center with a makerspace, art and music rooms, a gymnasium, and a daylit cafetorium support the school’s shift from a traditional classroom model to a collaborative, project-based way of working together.

Carefully sited to frame views of the Flatirons and settle gently into its neighborhood and the adjacent open space, Douglass treats the outdoors as an extension of the classroom — with outdoor learning areas, gardens, a shaded playground, and direct connections from the commons to the fields beyond. Built green from the ground up to Boulder Valley’s green-building principles and designed to pursue net-zero energy, the school pairs a high-performance, daylit envelope with the flexibility and character a close-knit community asked for. EDI led the educational visioning and learning-environment design, in partnership with RTA Architects.