Harrisonburg Combined
Elementary/Middle School
City of Harrisonburg, Virginia
Completed in 2008

The goal of this project was to truly build a school within a school, or shall we say . . . two schools within a school. Due to limited availability of suitable sites and the desire to reduce construction and operating costs, Harrisonburg City Public Schools set their sites on designing and building two separate schools within one consolidated building. The elementary school (Smithland Elementary) was designed for grades Pre-K through 4th and accommodates 500 students with a core capacity for 600 students. The middle school (Skyline Middle) was designed for grades 5th through 8th and accommodates 800 students with a core capacity for 900 students. One of the greatest challenges for this project was to combine the two schools while maintaining two separate identities at the same time. Separating the student bodies was a priority. A conflicting priority was also to provide future flexibility for the school system to return the 5th Grade to the elementary school if philosophies were to change. We achieved both of these design goals by locating the fifth grade in the middle school side, but directly down the single connecting corridor between the two schools.