“We love the use of color, the reconnection to outdoor spaces, the sense of scale, and in particular, the narrative of this project—that it was essentially a renovation, but there is a kind of overlay of old and new in a way that reinvents the spaces in the building.”
— Roberto de Leon, FAIA
“There is a lot of placemaking within the building itself, and it translates into a joyful place for the students to learn.”
— Celia Esther Arredondo Zambrano
Location Austin
Client Austin Independent School District
Architect McKinney York Architects
Design Team Michelle Rossomando, AIA, Al York, FAIA, Navvab Taylor, AIA, Patricia Hunt, AIA, Madhuri Shashidhar, Rossina Ojeda, Rylie Davis, Panchu Gudigar
Contractor Flintco
Civil Engineer GarzaEMC
Structural Engineer LEAP!Structures
MEP Engineer TG&W Engineers
Landscape Architect Garcia Design
Roofing/Envelope Consultant Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates
Fire Protection Engineer ARK Engineer and Consultants
Cost Estimating AG|CM
Food Service Foodservice Design Professionals
AV/Technology/Security/Acoustics DataCom Design Group
Accessibility Development Associates of Texas
Photographer Leonid Furmansky
Sánchez Elementary is an urban school in a rapidly gentrifying Latino neighborhood adjacent to downtown Austin. During this renovation project, neighborhood pride and community spirit emerged as critical themes, as did the concept of linkage. The building’s circulation was reorganized with a spine connecting new exterior canopies at existing entry points to major interior gathering spaces, and the first and second floors were connected by repurposing an underused internal courtyard into a learning stair. The school’s past was similarly tied to its future through the incorporation of key artifacts like murals, mosaics, and portraits and creative reinterpretation of existing motifs and symbols. An existing double-headed serpent mosaic inspired undulating banded slats that wrap communal spaces and extend through the roof, and the original hexagonal tile facade pattern was reinterpreted at larger scale for ceilings and walls.