The future is looking especially fun for kids in Guilford County as one of the first gaming and robotics elementary schools in the country is currently under construction there. Foust Gaming and Robotics Magnet School, a new school being built on the site of the original 1965 Foust Elementary School, is expected to welcome students in fall 2024. With a program of inspiring spaces that will allow kids to explore and investigate technology in new ways, the school of the future is coming.
The new school will feature coding, programming, and project-based learning, with an emphasis on career-focused education at an early grade level for 700 students. The school aims to set students up for 21st-century vocations even before high school and college, giving them the tools and language to compete in a world where gaming is big business and robots are being designed to work with humans on every imaginable task. Today’s designers know they are building spaces where kids will get the education to springboard them to careers that don’t exist yet.
With maker spaces and eat-and-learn wellness spaces, the design team at Gensler is creating a unique elementary school as a place of energy, joy, and creativity. This new home of the Foust Elementary School Falcons incorporates spaces for small group collaboration, indoor-outdoor learning spaces, and even places where kids can be innovative and loud and let their creativity out, something that wasn’t always considered in traditional school design.
The site design includes a collaboration with the design team on play amenities, a trail, and the conservation of existing trees on the site. In addition to landscape architecture, Stewart is providing structural engineering at the K-5 school.
Part of the bond package passed by voters in 2020, the new Foust Gaming and Robotics Magnet Elementary School will prepare kids for the careers of the future by inspiring them today in this one-of-a-kind school.
