APS Matheson Park Elementary School campus is situated adjacent to a City of Albuquerque park in an established 1960s low-middle income neighborhood in Albuquerque’s Northeast Heights. With the campus consisting primarily of portable units, the community and staff had long awaited a building addition that would provide the campus with its first permanent classrooms and help to define and enhance the school as a whole.Collaborative meetings early on between RMKM and APS facilities staff, school teachers, parents, administrators and neighborhood representatives resulted in an overall goal to reach beyond the generic classroom type to create a distinctive new model facility. Conceiving the building as an “introspective,” RMKM designed its outward face as neo-modern, while the inward campus face and interior spaces create provocative and memorable interior environments with rational organization and interactive relationships. The new facility includes nine classrooms, a computer laboratory, an indoor/outdoor classroom with a stage and stepped seating, boys-girls toilets and the Celestial Hall gallery.

As a whole, the composition strives to encourage, enhance and support: inspiration, educator retention, student thought, clear way-finding, memorable destinations, multi-functionality, flexibility, community involvement, team teaching, user safety and security, technology integration, meaningful educational interaction and intellectual development.