Belmonte Elementary School

After building a brand new high school, Saugus needed to economically provide a new home for their school district office and perform necessary. system upgrades on other schools. With a tweaked grade configuration, Tappé was able to take freed up space in one wing of the existing Belmonte school for administrative use and convert the remaining structure from a dated middle school to a modern elementary school.

A suite of 5 STEAM classrooms were created each with a different focus (makerspace, studio art, digital art, computer tech, science) connected physically by passageways, but also visually with glass partitions so that each of these disciplines could see and be inspired by one another. You can stand in one classroom and see all the way through the classrooms. This type of informal cross-pollination from one room to the next lends itself well to actual inter-disciplinary collaboration. Full classes or individual groups of students may switch or integrate with others.