The Adams Central School District embraces a largely agricultural community drawing nearly 1,000 students from an area of more than 300 square miles. To respond to changing pedagogical requirements, increasing operational costs, and a desire to provide flexible learning spaces with integrated technology support, the District envisioned one centrally-located elementary school that would serve all its students. The exterior design concept, inspired by local farmers who manipulated the Jeffersonian grid, creates texture through a variety of methods: brick parquet pattern reflects land use, stacked bond recalling planted crop rows, and voids representing farmer access to fields. The agricultural concept continues inside with repeated brick and precast grids intermixed with bright splashes of color.

Jury Notes: This use of masonry on the long, low facade of this school is very much connected to its agrarian context in rural Nebraska. The building is clad in precast concrete panels with brick and metal panel inlays whose patterns are inspired by the layout of farm fields and row crops as seen from the air.  The brick detailing adds texture to the building and helps to break down the scale in a manner that works both on a literal and a poetic level.