Garfield Heights, Ohio

In order to help alleviate overcrowding, ARCADIS designed a new, state of the art high school with provisions for a future performing arts center and sports stadium for the Garfield Heights School District. The new school complex is designed for 1,500 students.

The Challenge

The school district presented the following challenges with respect to the design of their new high school:

• Develop required academic and support space to facilitate their educational program 
  
• Design a facility to promote learning through the use of space, form, texture, scale and color.
  
• Incorporate the latest in technology
  
• Provide superior security 
  
• Develop a community focus with selected school functions
  
• Provide an aesthetic building in the context of the community of Garfield Heights.

To add just one more challenge, the only site available was small, sliced with unmovable underground utilities, and was shared with an existing middle school that had to be maintained before it could be demolished.

The ARCADIS Solution

The design solution addressed these challenges by incorporating a three-building interconnected campus that would allow phased construction. By orienting the entries inward and away from the main street, a high level of safety and security was achieved and by using multiple buildings interconnected pedestrian bridges, the existing utilities and easements were maintained. Stepped wall façade massing, brick, and standing seam metal roofs provide a sense of human scale and low maintenance, while satisfying the district’s desire to avoid “trendy” architecture and reflect the honest hard working values of the community.

Plan layouts were carefully developed to allow controlled access to selected areas by the community and to allow operations to occur in separate buildings. A major fiber optics trunk line provided technology access to each room for voice, data, video, security and energy management. A centrally located media distribution center and separate technology room were also developed as vital technology components. Additional facilities include a large teacher’s planning area to promote interaction and cross curriculum planning, science labs, art studios, special needs classrooms, computer labs, food preparation, and administration and guidance support areas.