The TruexCullins Education Studio is providing a fresh look at the Tashkent International School’s campus needs and developing a campus-wide master plan.

To kick off this work, Joe Bolinger and Cam Featherstonhaugh traveled to Uzbekistan to the Tashkent International School campus to conduct a site visit and workshops. They conducted visioning workshops with the school community, utilizing The Whole Child Framework developed by TruexCullins. Meetings with local partners and interviews during this visit helped establish guiding principles and quantify space needs.

TruexCullins has been working with Tashkent International School since 2015. The TXC team developed an earlier master plan in 2016 and was then hired to develop schematic design drawings for an elementary school addition, the first project in the phased master plan. The design was developed by the local design team and construction was completed in 2023.

For this latest project, the TXC team is returning to Uzbekistan to collaborate with the school community, seeking to understand the vision of a new administration team and the challenges and dreams in a post-Covid world.

TIS is a non-profit, independent PK-12 International Baccalaureate World School. Five embassies in Tashkent (USA, UK, Germany, France, and Korea) and the United Nations Resident Coordinator founded the school 29 years ago, shortly after Uzbekistan’s independence. TIS still has strong ties to the diplomatic community; students (500) and staff come from over 60 nationalities. The 14-acre (5.7 hectares) campus is in a residential district of the city, not too far away from the city center.

TIS aspires to be known for outdoor education and experiential/learning programs and desires to build on the strength of the park-like campus. The current goal is to incorporate LEED or similar green building standards into the planning, consistent with their focus, and create a campus that expresses features of Uzbek architecture and culture, albeit in a global, modern way.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR TASHKENT INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL

Since their return from Uzbekistan, Cam and Joe have begun to develop design options that will lead to a final concept and design strategy to successfully complete the work in phases.

We are excited for this next stage in the evolution of the Tashkent International School and we look forward to working with the school community to bring this vision to reality.