The built solution for Pine School Campus, a private school, located in Hobe Sound completed in 2007, required sensitive consideration of a variety of users with multiple needs, expectations, and training. Students in grades six through twelve, their teachers, counselors, and school staff required a kaleidoscope of order and opportunity. Like Le Corbusier, the architects employ light as a vital element to create healthy educational, social, and recreational spaces. Other materials were equally important in realizing the campus vision. Polished concrete, perforated aluminum, stucco and fritted structural glazing offer robustness and sundry sensory engagement. They are a nod to vernacular sensibilities replete in island life and at the same time an embrace of the diversity of learning abilities and styles. The tensile fabric components both shade and lend a sense of vital whimsy in what otherwise might be a dry academic institution. The play of light and shadow on the surface of multifarious materials, such as the galvalume siding, further accentuates a sense of curiosity and play, while stitching together with a rational continuity the multiple wings of the school itself. Upon arrival at the Pine School Campus, a child is greeted by an intriguing “symmetrical asymmetry”, one in which form and function playfully interact like a Rubix cube. The space, comprised of varied volumes and planes, materials and functions, provides an abundance of visual, directional and educational possibilities, akin to the options proffered in a “choose your own adventure” series. In many respects, the design encapsulates the learning philosophy of multiple intelligences developed by educational theorist Howard Gardner, one in which the individual “cognitive profile” of each child is duly acknowledged, allowing for a more holistic and ultimately successful approach to education. The 97,000 square foot complex offers students a visceral connection to both intellectual and physical place. Surrounded by wetlands, shrub-scrub meadows and open water, the school opens and closes, waxes and wanes, inviting introspection and investigation. Borrowing from the familiar vocabulary of educational “quad”, the architects create a green courtyard which embraces the outdoors, unites the space and shelters users from the elements. The configuration of the campus encourages children to explore both interior and exterior space during formal learning times, study breaks, lunch, recreation or campus assemblies. Classrooms, labs, library and grounds provide for individual and group activity. 2008 AIAFL Design Excellence Award Education requires an elusive dose of order and chaos, predictability and improvisation in order to succeed. The program for this school called for classrooms and labs for group learning, a library for individual and group study, and places for assembly, performance, athletics and relaxation. It is an academic village where groups emerge, are disbanded and regroup: a community for learning,growing and discovering. The campus design is a functional and formal response to a specific educational vision and program of both active and continuous expansion and inward change. Its structure promotes education and profoundly engages the specifics of its location: “touched” environment re-defining itself through the introduction of children and teachers.