FEATURED PROJECTS

ROMA is currently designing a new elementary school at Kirtland Air Force Base for Albuquerque Public Schools. The project encompasses a complete redesign of the site including replacement of an existing 1950's classroom building, several portables, and all site amenities.

The design strives to create a safe, playful, and inspiring learning environment that reflects regional and local contexts including the specific context of the Air Force Base. In an effort to distill the spirit of the place into a guiding concept, the project explores the notion of flight as perceived through the mind of a child.

Flight is a metaphor for so many positive attributes that can relate to education or any aspect of life that requires a leap of faith. Flight can represent growth, wisdom, enlightenment, power, freedom. From the perspective of a child, flight may represent the adventure, wonder, and magic so often depicted in childrens stories such as Peter Pan, the Magic Carpet, and Dr. Seuss to name a few examples. The architecture aspires to inspire childhood wonder through the abstraction of flight related themes into sculptural and pattern-based elements such as folded facade shading evocative of paper airplanes, wayfinding and circulation mimicking runways, and porthole windows reminiscent of early aircraft design.