Betty Fairfax High School

1. 2008 Exhibition of School Planning and Architecture Betty Fairfax High School Phoenix, AZ High School Project of Distinction DLR Group

2. Betty Fairfax High School

3. Campus Pathways Community Environment: The district’s vision to create a Small Learning Environment within a new 2,400-student urban high school was achieved by translating it into a brainstorm of ideas. This “Ideation” became the launching point for an incredibly unique and pure Small Learning Community campus. The Ideation equipped the design team to create a high school that embraced the following ideals to impact students through: Focus. Personalization. Transparency. Empowerment. Socialization. Community. Motivation. Dispersion. Ownership. Adaptability. Innovation. Compactness. Nurturing. Inspiration. Identity. Security. Intuition. Diversity. Rigor. Reflection. Relevance. Respect. While these concepts raised the banner for creative design, the team never lost sight of the real-world challenges and problems facing students, staff, and faculty today—issues of security and safety, identity and pride, efficiency and accountability.

4. Campus Connections Community Environment: The campus responds to the unique community surrounding the site: multi-family housing to the north and south, residential to the east and commercial to the west. The contemporary design takes advantage of picturesque mountain views, as most of the two-story buildings feature extensive windows. Classroom buildings reach out to eastern neighborhoods and frame morning sunrises. Several open, but shaded gathering spaces are found along the chief street that runs through the campus. Student Services is located at the center of the campus, adjacent to the food service kitchen. Student Services is the central icon for the campus, where visitors enter and students gather to use the central Library and Café. These three traditionally separate functions combine in one unique collaborative and vibrant space, creating both interior and exterior spaces for students to study, gather, and relax.

5. Small Learning Community Learning Environment: The planning solution developed a Small Learning Community (SLC) design to deliver the promise of a small school environment on a large school campus. The SLC design solution clusters classrooms into separate schools while providing collaborative space for students and staff. Each SLC includes administration, counseling, and computer/media services as well as a large gathering area to accommodate the entire student population of that individual school, allowing a true community to develop. These SLCs promote a genuine sense of belonging. They are designed to form a rich learning environment by providing inspirational spaces and sociable places where students are encouraged and empowered to succeed.

6. Science Lab Learning Environment: The goal was to organize the large 2,400 student population into smaller cohorts, each with their own distinct identity and a degree of autonomy. Each SLC has the same number of core curriculum classrooms, and science labs. This allows students to focus the majority of their academic time with a smaller group of peers, resulting in familiarity between students and staff, ownership in their education and surroundings, and pride and inclusiveness within their SLC.

7. Performing Arts Center Learning Environment: The facility supports the in-place instructional process and adapts easily to changing curricular delivery models. Each SLC has a plug-in curriculum, unique to their school, and encourages targeted involvement of students from other areas of campus. These plug-in curriculum pieces include Dance, Studio Arts, Aerobics/Weights, and Computer Technology. Having elective curriculum focused in different schools lends a unique identity to the respective schools and allows socialization between students from the four schools.

8. Student Gathering Area Physical Environment Administration, counseling, and resource and computer labs occur at each SLC and are planned around a large central, multi-use gathering area to accommodate a variety of activities. The SLC serves as the defining structure to the campus layout, with PE/Athletics and Performing Arts acting as bookends for the campus. In addition, these large program elements are integrated into the academic fabric of the campus by virtue of their association to the aforementioned ‘plug-in’ curriculum pieces. Both major components would then have a strong association with the core curriculum, metaphorically and figuratively.

9. Media Center Physical Environment: Fresh air, daylight and expansive views are highlights of this project. Daylight in all core classrooms is enhanced through the building’s orientation, while minimizing thermal heat gain. Other energy-efficient features include a highly performing building envelope and an efficient central chiller system, and native landscaping. Indoor air quality is enhanced due to use of low maintenance materials. The bold forms, materials and color palette of the school’s design mimic desert flowers spread beneath the backdrop of rugged mountains.

10. SLC at Dusk Planning Process: The design process was an intensely collaborative one. Throughout our six-step design process we collaborated with district leaders, faculty, students, and neighborhood representatives as a true community design team to arrive at the final visionary result for Betty Fairfax High School. Collaborative charette sessions occurred weekly during 60 days of conceptual design with representation from the following groups: Administration Student Council Executive Team Principals Curriculum Leaders CORE Curriculum Advisors Science Faculty Performing Arts Faculty Visual/Applied Arts Faculty Music/Band Faculty Technology Faculty Library Staff Athletics/PE Faculty Life Skills/Day-Care Staff Food Service Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing Landscape/Maintenance City of Phoenix Streets & Traffic Utility and Infrastructure Adjacent Developers & City Planners

11. SLC at Dusk Planning Process: The interactive planning process established six memorable goals derived from the specific challenges identified which guided the design process and formed the basis for judging the success of the project: Small Learning Communities Student-Focused Campus Adaptability over Time Intuitive Design Interactivity and Personalization Environmental Responsibility “The development of this school was well-planned and many people contributed to making it work. We opened on time, fully functional and awed by the spectacular results. It was inspiring to see the reaction of our staff, students and parents when they saw this facility for the first time,” - Zachary Munoz, Principal

12. Exhibition of School Planning and Architecture 2008 Project Data

13. Exhibition of School Planning and Architecture 2008 Project Details