The project is in the design stages with MDSzerbaty Associates Architecture, New York, serving as lead architect. The school will include 21 new classrooms along 17th Street; specialized instructional areas for art, music, science, a library and a multi-purpose room that will look over 6th Avenue from the upper floors; a cafeteria and dance studio on the main floor; a rooftop play area on the second floor; a lecture hall/auditorium on the lower level; and a community room above the main lobby on the second floor, which will also include administrative areas.

The new PS 340 aims to be a green school, following SCA guidelines. The project challenged designers to conceive of ways to create a bright open school in a building that will be occupied by existing multi-tenants. The solution: a new glass-enclosed staircase will be inserted between the second and sixth floors and a new window wall at the stairway’s core will provide light to the school’s corridors.

“Converting a functioning hospital built in 1988 into a modern and welcoming primary school is just the kind of challenge we like,” said Michael D. Szerbaty, principal of MDSzerbaty Associates in a statement. “One that required us to think ’inside the box’ so to speak.”

The PS 340 project is nearing completion of the design stage and construction is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2012. The SCA has not yet selected a construction manager. A bid date has not been set.

Brooklyn

FDNY Plans New Greenpoint EMS Station

THE FIRE DEPT. of New York started construction on a two-story, 12,400-sq-ft Emergency Medical Service Station located on Metropolitan Avenue near Bedford Street in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section.

The new station, designed by Michielli + Wyetzner, New York, is part of the New York City Department of Design and Construction’s design excellence program, which helps the FDNY improve response time to medical emergencies throughout the city.

The new station will be divided into four parts, with the first floor designed to store four emergency vehicles, a vehicle support zone and personal protective equipment storage area, a lieutenant’s office and other administrative spaces. The second floor will house the locker rooms and bathrooms for the 54 women and 97 men that will maintain the station’s three work shifts. And on the west side of the second floor will be a training room and a 700-sq-ft combined kitchen and lounge area.

One of the key features of the new EMS station will be a 90-ft long, second-story translucent glass wall that will have a honeycomb pattern set into the glass and will appear to float above the facility’s ground floor. The station will be lit up in the evenings to create a distinct presence in the Williamsburg/Greenpoint community.

The new EMS station is slated to open in June 2012.