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Architecture
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| # 261 |
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| Completion |
1 / 2025 |
| Specific Use of Building |
Education |
| Project Location |
Irvine, California |
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Context
Originally built in 1976, Greentree Elementary School required a new multi-purpose facility to support evolving educational models while strengthening campus identity and community connection. Inspired by music’s impact on learning and social interaction, the “Treehouse” reimagines the campus heart as a flexible gathering space for creativity, performance, and belonging. Carefully sited along a public-facing campus edge, the building preserves mature trees while creating a welcoming front porch for students, families, and the broader community. Conceived as a lantern for the neighborhood, transparency, warm wood materials, and expressive roof forms allow the building to glow outward, while extended trellis elements blur indoor and outdoor space, provide shade, and soften the building’s scale.
Budget
Delivered within a $7.2 million budget, the Treehouse demonstrates how thoughtful planning and restrained material selection can create a high-impact environment with long-term value. Flexible planning strategies minimize future renovation needs while durable, healthy, and cost-effective materials support performance and occupant wellbeing. Recycled-content flooring, low-VOC paints, recycled PET acoustic panels, and solar-responsive window shades contribute to healthier indoor environments, reduced energy demand, and long-term resiliency.
Special Challenges
Balancing transparency, flexibility, acoustic performance, and environmental responsiveness while preserving existing site features was a challenge. The Treehouse was carefully positioned to protect mature trees and shaded gathering areas, while environmental analysis informed glazing, shading, and daylighting strategies that maximize natural light and minimize glare and heat gain. The design promotes physical and mental wellbeing through indoor-outdoor connections, access to daylight, fresh air, and user-controlled comfort. Large operable glass walls, deep overhangs, and trellises support passive energy reduction while creating adaptable learning and community spaces.
The Design Solution
The Treehouse is conceived as an instrument in dialogue with the campus, projecting the energy of music and learning into its surroundings. Inspired by music’s rhythm and structure, the design integrates architecture, structure, and program into a flexible and expressive environment supporting school and community use. A simple glass form reveals creative activity within, while sliding walls dissolve boundaries between indoors and outdoors. Drawing from the existing campus vocabulary through wood siding, sloped roof forms, and lower trellis elements, the building feels both rooted and renewed. Exposed heavy timber beams rhythmically span the interior, like lines of a musical staff, while suspended lighting elements subtly reference floating musical notes.
Sustainable Design
Passive strategies guided building orientation, daylighting, and shading to improve comfort and reduce energy use. The project achieves a predicted EUI of 28 kBTU/SF/year, a 69% reduction from the AIA 2030 baseline, with the potential to become net positive through future photovoltaics. Healthy, low-impact materials and high-efficiency systems support wellbeing, durability, and long-term environmental stewardship. |
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