Des Moines Public Schools

As DMPS embarked on re-imagining education and proposing a bold new vision for Iowa’s most populous and diverse school district, they tasked BBS with conceptualizing a new kind of DMPS school, a magnet school uniting grades 7 through 12 with a STEM focus. This project was integral to the 90+ member Reimagining Education (RE) committee’s process and to the district’s successful “Reimagining Education” bond referendum, the largest in state history, with 74% of the vote. To ensure the RE committee stayed on schedule, BBS sprinted for almost four months, meeting weekly with RE committee members and DMPS leadership, to help the district dream big. This project redefines what an educational facility is and how it can focus on the community while delivering outstanding growth for students. Leading with big ideas and working through the details, BBS showed DMPS that a school could look like, feel like, and function in innovative and effective ways. Part of this was developing an idea-based identity for DMPS school. More compelling than forced colors, materials, or logos, the identity of the lantern is immediately recognizable across the district’s 73 sites and infinitely adaptable to their 125-year building portfolio. The defining quality of this school is the students’ engagement in the continuum of their studies and by extension in the world beyond the school grounds, as shaped by the environment. From the generous and welcoming entry plaza, students, teachers, and the community are drawn inward to the multi-level interactive nexus of the middle and high school wings. Found spaces for community building between peers and interactive examples of STEM in action surprise and delight around every turn. As the school opens up to the landscape beyond, classrooms extend outdoors onto terraces and into the nurtured natural environment. Rising above, the lantern, a beacon to the community, is a symbol of a school called to do more – to be a gathering place of curiosity and discovery; to be an inspiring light shining into the future.