Saugus Middle High School
Sited along bustling Route 1, and near the historic Saugus Iron Works, the new Saugus Middle High School supports forward-thinking education and celebrates the town’s rich history of innovation.
Saugus, MA
271,000 sf
6 – 12
1,360
LEED Platinum
45% annually
72% generated on site
“I think this is one of the proudest investments that the Town has made in my lifetime – it shows the values that the community wants to invest in our children and in our education.”
Scott Crabtree | Town Manager, Saugus, MA
The new facility brings middle and high school students together in a STEAM-driven complex of fabrication labs, collaboration spaces, and project areas that offer hands-on opportunities for exploratory learning. Students enter the building onto the “main street;” a circulation route connecting public spaces within the school.
This central path links the 750-seat auditorium, cafeteria, student café, and various breakout spaces to create a “Starbucks-style” commons. Distinct middle and high school classroom wings are separated by shared core spaces, while eighth and ninth graders share the same floor to ease the transition from middle to high school.
Learning Communities
To promote student well-being, the design implements a team-based organizational strategy that divides academic zones into grade-level pods, creating smaller learning communities that foster human connection. Each learning pod contains academic classrooms and science labs with large movable glass walls that open to a shared project area for group collaboration, team teaching, and independent project work.
“When a student walks into this space, their expression says it all… the learning and exploring possibilities are limitless.”
Myra D. Monto | Former Associate Principal, Saugus Middle High School
The Past Inspires the Future
Monumental, multi-story lightwells located in common spaces and project areas distribute natural light throughout the school and create sightlines between grade levels. Each lightwell contains a custom super graphic depicting one of Saugus’ vital historic industries: iron, ice, and lobstering. The graphics provide a unique identity to the pods and connect to the school’s larger wayfinding system, grounding students in contextual history and imbuing the school with the greater spirit of the Saugus community.
The curved form of the multi-story lightwells references a cross-section of the blast furnaces that powered the Saugus Iron Works.
Specialty Spaces
Shared specialty spaces are distributed throughout the facility, including drama classrooms, a robotics lab, broadcast studio, coding & web/graphic design lab, and 3D design & computer-aided design labs. Access to these exploratory learning spaces fosters creativity, immerses students in the latest technologies, and equips them with the necessary skills to pursue higher education and successful careers.
Holistic Sustainability
The resilient and future-ready school design applies a holistic approach to environmental sustainability as the first state-funded LEED Platinum certified project. A tri-generation plant that produces electricity and captures waste heat for space heating and cooling helps reduce carbon emissions by 49 tons per year, saves operating costs, and acts as backup power, creating a more resilient facility. Inspired by the Saugus River’s central role in the Town’s history, the design incorporates water conservation measures including a stormwater collection and reuse system and green roofs that will slow stormwater runoff, saving more than 1.5 million gallons of water annually.
Awards/Credits
- K-12 Educational Facilities Honor Award, Boston Society for Architecture Design Awards, 2022
- Project of Distinction, Association for Learning Environments Planning and Design Awards, 2022
- Grand Prize, Learning By Design Spring Educational Facilities Design Awards, 2021
- Top K-12 Education Project, ENR New England Regional Best Projects, 2021
- Honorable Mention Section Award: Environmental Lighting Design, IES Illumination Awards, 2022
- Outstanding Design, American School & University Architectural Portfolio Awards, 2021
- Photography, Robert Benson
