In designing a new high school for this two-town district’s growing population, HMFH created a facility that fosters a small schools approach. With two distinct wings around a shared core, the design increases student-teacher interaction by breaking the population down into smaller groups.
Grades 9-10 occupy one wing of the school and grades 11-12 are housed in the other; math and science classrooms are concentrated on the lower floor with humanities classrooms on the upper floor. Each pair of classrooms shares a mini-lab equipped with 10 computer stations for small group projects and individual research. Instructional areas include science laboratories, technology education laboratories, and dedicated computer classrooms. The school also features an art suite with separate ceramics studio and dark room, a television studio shared by the local cable television station, and a media center wired to accommodate student laptops in the main reading room and in adjacent student project rooms.
The central student dining commons serves as the main lobby, an informal student gathering space, and as a visual link to the academic wings and other core spaces in the school. An exterior curved glass wall offers views of the campus and adjacent conservation land and an interior glass wall connects the library with the commons and the gymnasium. A black box theater with 100 fixed seats and an 800-seat gymnasium complete the core facilities for this 850-student school, which can expand to 1,200. The school is surrounded by extensive playing fields, including a lighted eight-lane track and soccer field.