The concept of a High School is that it is generally a place without identity, an anonymous backdrop to our urban fabric. Generally monolithic and unarticulated, they sit as a functional shell meant to foster the education of new generations. In this project, we wondered what it would look like to flip this notion, that a high school could be a civic icon, a place that inspired its students and teachers alike, a place of curiosity and collaboration, that would foster the kind of creative thinking and interactions that are necessary for a 21st century workforce and adult life.

We decided to take the tripartite structure of a palazzo, an outwardly civic building, and give it a sense of playfulness. The columns are various forms of circles and ellipses, scaling as they ascend the building, and cut in half. This cutting of the column plays with the perception of the building from various angles. In some views they are perfect shapes, in others oblong columns that form an exterior colonnade. This was also important in the project, to create a school that wasn’t just inward looking, but always with an outer “room”, a place for small conversations and fresh air and nature to permeate into each classroom, a reinterpretation of the civic nature of the portico as a place for discourse, debate, and community.

The plan of this project is a driving force in creating both the centripetal forces, that radiate classes to the exterior, and draw collaboration to the large central spaces for gathering, all lit by large atria. It is also important in creating exterior public space, a frontal backdrop for a plaza for children to gather and play, an oblique cut pulling the front façade away from the street, in order to create a more generous landscape as one enters the school. A strong symmetrical form that pushes against this otherwise suburban residential neighborhood. It finds itself mediating somewhere between ornamental neighbor, and civic institution.