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Notre Dame School and Parish Plaza was born after an effort to design a gathering place for the community that could serve as a recreation area for elementary and middle school kids during the weekdays. For Notre Dame’s Pastor, Msgr. Father Edward L. Buelt, the gathering plaza was aiming to become the first space where the community could turn into a church or an “ecclesia.” Based on that principle, Fr. Ed always had in mind Saint Peter’s Square in Rome, where two covered colonnades framed the square prior to accessing Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Our plaza partially borrows the geometry used by Bernini in Rome, and provides a landscape design in which the ramps create an open room that can be used both as a plaza and as an open to sky classroom. Located on the north side of the Parish, our mostly hard concrete design is completed by Oxbow Landscape Architects’ iconic selection of Colorado native flora. This way the plaza delicately balances the transition between the parking lot and the church, and complements the school activities with sitting areas for both contemplation and active engagement.