Shaping School Communities: How OL+ Uses Immersion to Guide Master Planning
At OLSON LEWIS + Architects, designing schools is about more than buildings—it’s about understanding the people who bring those spaces to life. Our decades of experience in educational environments have led us to develop a thoughtful, collaborative process we call IMMERSION—an approach that places your school’s culture at the heart of every master planning conversation.
Here’s how we help schools translate vision into Beautiful Places.
What Is IMMERSION?
IMMERSION is OL+’s proven method for gathering insight before planning begins. It’s an active, on-site process that includes:
- Observation: Experiencing your campus as students, educators, and visitors do
- Engagement: Hosting conversations with faculty, staff, students, parents, trustees, alumni, and facilities teams
- Discovery: Uncovering the values, needs, and aspirations unique to your school community
By investing time in listening, we capture not just data—but the heartbeat of your campus.
Asking the Right Questions
Our experience enables us to ask the important, and sometimes overlooked, questions—sparking insights from every stakeholder group. Through guided sessions, we explore:
- What defines your school culture?
- How do your spaces currently support—or hinder—learning and connection?
- What hopes do students, families, and staff have for the future?
Patterns emerge across diverse perspectives, helping us identify shared priorities that guide the master planning process.
Listening, Distilling, and Defining Your Narrative
From these conversations, OL+ distills common themes into a cohesive narrative—often building upon ideas previously imagined but not fully explored. This narrative, unique to your school, becomes the foundation of your master plan.
Crafting the Master Plan
Informed by your school’s story and grounded in practical realities—such as site conditions, existing buildings, regulatory considerations, and budget—our master plan recommendations reflect both vision and viability.
We don’t just create plans. We craft frameworks that guide your community forward—spaces that honor your school’s history while enabling its future.
Creating Beautiful Places That Tell Your Story
At OLSON LEWIS + Architects, we believe Beautiful Places should reflect the people who inhabit them. Through IMMERSION, we help schools create spaces that celebrate community, support learning, and inspire future generations.
