The Mundo Verde Bilingual Public Charter School was one of the last projects we worked on at Studio 27 Architecture before heading out on our own. The project comprised a renovation of a 1920's brick school building, and the construction of a new, free-standing annex for the youngest students. Around the studio, the annex was known as the "Kinderhaus", owing to Hans getting his hands on it first. Fortunately Hans is fluent in Spanish as well as German (and French and some other stuff...) and Mundo Verde is very clearly a bilingual Spanish/English language school. So the Kinderhaus became the Casa Caracol (the Snail House), in reference to an early design that had a sloping, wrapped circulation path. Later, as the process to make LEED Platinum slowed the project, snail house took on a different meaning. The project just won an AIA Committee on Architecture in Education design award. Thanks to John and Todd at S27 for giving us the opportunity to help realize this unique project.