Brickell World School K-12

Addressing school capacity and teacher housing needs in one of Miami’s fastest-developing neighborhoods, Brickell World School is a seven-story building designed to educate and feed more than 600 students and on-site staff. The RealFood challenge: To design highly efficient foodservice facilities within the unique constraints of a vertical urban environment.

How We Fit In

RealFood was engaged by Zyscovich Architects (now Stratus Team) to envision the K-12 school’s foodservice areas to serve a high volume of student and staff end-users.

The Task at Hand

Space and budget were locked in for a single cafeteria to serve the massive student body and staff, including the faculty living in onsite housing. RF DesignStudio was tasked with fitting the required design elements into a fixed footprint while matching the state-of-the-art vision of a world-class educational institution.

Pencil to Paper

Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ kitchen prototype guidelines and standard specifications were required in the plans, but the RealFood team still brought a fresh design sensibility to the table. With walls and columns already in place, our team mapped out every inch to ensure high-performance equipment and required workspaces could coexist.

To maximize throughput, we selected a double-sided serving line with a mix of self-serve and staff-attended stations. To solve for the vertical logistics of the space and minimize makeup air requirements, RealFood integrated strategic cut-outs for hot and cold pass-through equipment, reducing unnecessary trips between the front and back of the house.

In the End

By adding a few innovative twists to the county’s standard foodservice design, RealFood’s foodservice facility design ensured long-term efficiency. The cafeteria is equipped to handle the speed and volume required to feed many people in a short period of time, day after day. By allowing students to engage with open-air merchandisers alongside traditional service stations, we transformed “school lunch” into a relevant dining experience.