Henderson-Hopkins School

The Henderson-Hopkins School is the first new Baltimore public school in nearly 30 years. A 125,000 sf, K-8 partnership school and early childhood center run by Johns Hopkins University – Henderson-Hopkins is a progressive learning environment for children and a laboratory for the next generation of educators. The school is a cluster of “containers for learning” inspired by East Baltimore’s row houses, stoops, and social civic spaces. The scale, composition, pattern, and rhythm of East Baltimore inspired the planning and the architecture of the school. Streets are continued through the school’s two-block site as major communal arteries and social centers. Baltimore’s building block of row houses and internal courtyards inform the plan of interior and exterior learning spaces. Facades step down along the street; the ubiquitous neighborhood form-stone is reimagined in the grooved pre-cast concrete. The glowing Commons set education as a visual landmark following the city’s church steeples’ tradition. Community uses – a Family Resource Center, library, auditorium and gym – form an accessible and visible civic front aside the school’s entrance. Through its intentionally porous, safe, urban plan, and the craftsmanship of light, materiality and performance, its design respects history and supports the future of education and of its neighborhood.