Shapes and Colors

"It's a rush -- there's nothing like it," CEO Sharon Raimo says of the colors and shapes at the new St. Coletta charter school for mentally disabled children. (Photos By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)

For years, St. Coletta took in D.C. public school students whose needs could not be served in the city's educational system. Often, though, that happened only after parents fought long and hard, as DCPS sought to keep special-education students inside the system. (The city must pay private-school expenses for students it cannot serve.)

But in 2001, city officials started to work with St. Coletta to relocate the school to the District. Eventually the city offered to lease the land on Independence Avenue to St. Coletta for a dollar a year. St. Coletta, at the urging of the D.C. Office of Special Education, agreed to apply for public charter-school status.

The students range in age from 3 to 22. (The older students hold jobs but use the school as a home base.) To qualify for the school, students must be considered severely cognitively disabled -- suffering from mental retardation or autism -- and many have secondary physical disabilities as well. Approximately 20 percent of the students are in wheelchairs, 50 percent are nonverbal and 10 percent are hearing-impaired.

Operating costs will be covered through a combination of the standard per-pupil charter-school payment and a "gap payment" from the Office of Special Education to cover the additional costs of educating the types of students served by St. Coletta.

Raimo, who has been at St. Coletta for 13 years, is the one who decided to entice Michael Graves & Associates to take on the project.

"We have always been drawn to projects for children," wrote John Diebboll, the architect in charge of the project, responding to questions via e-mail. "However, nothing in our lives had prepared us for the day that Michael Graves and I first visited the St. Coletta School in Alexandria. We experienced an immediate connection with the students and staff and realized that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime challenge and an extraordinary opportunity."

(A year later, in the early planning stages, Graves was stricken with a mysterious illness that has left him partly paralyzed and in a wheelchair -- an event Diebboll cited as giving him even greater insight into the needs of St. Coletta's population.)

Raimo was ecstatic to have the firm on board; some neighbors not so much. Activists fought the zoning approval; after losing that battle, the Graves design became a subject of fierce debate -- and, at times, fierce ridicule. "New Coletta Campus Widely Hated Here" was the headline of an article last year in the newspaper The Hill. The neighborhood e-mail list was swamped with comments, many of them angry.

Diebboll described the facility's geometric design as "relating to architectural elements in the neighborhood as well as to educational elements in the school." And the color choices were, according to Diebboll, designed to "emphasize the joyful and positive nature of the school's mission."

Overall, the design is an attempt to integrate the residential neighborhood that borders the school on one side with the much larger-scale Armory and RFK on the other -- hence, Diebboll pointed out, the decision to make "the school's classrooms along 19th Street appear to be brick houses that relate both in scale and color to the existing homes they face."

The building includes a nursing facility and physical therapy centers, as a well as a hydrotherapy room. There are studios for art and music, individual kitchens in each "house" and even a "sensory" room designed to stimulate students with lights and colors and sounds. The entire building is designed to be both handicap-accessible and safe for children who can be at risk of harming themselves. (Graves had to forgo the dramatic open staircase he hoped to have as a centerpiece near the front entrance.)

"Everything is really well thought out and designed to minimize disruption in the classroom, and to be able to deliver all the services the kids need in the classroom," said Chip Henstenburg. His 13-year-old son, Evan -- who has cerebral palsy, is blind and is described by his father as "severely disabled" -- attended St. Coletta in Alexandria for the last several years and is now enrolled at the charter school.

As for the fantastical nature of the design, Henstenburg said he was definitely struck by it and found it rather fun.

"If it came in the Michael Graves package, I'd take it," he said. "If it came more square and rectangular and less whimsical, I'd take it also."