Arlington, Viriginia, USA

Studio27architecture has succeded in the comprehensive renovation of a municipal public school system by converting a 55,000-square-foot 1968 office building into a state-of-the-art annex facility for the high school with which it shares a campus.

The Washington Liberty High School Annex project has recently been awarded a 2023 American Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture, Design, and Urban Studies.

The project expands the enrollment capacity of the existing high school by 600 students.

With its abundant collaborative learning spaces, the project supports the school system’s desire for an updated educational pedagogy.

No longer are fixed classrooms the only container for learning.

Programming of the new annex includes classrooms, collaboration spaces, workout space, science labs, and office space, as well as alterations to the building envelope and replacement glazing systems.

The mission of the school system is to ensure all students learn and thrive in safe, healthy, and supportive learning environments as an inclusive community that empowers all students to foster their dreams, explore their possibilities, and create their futures.

There were three major components of the renovation design.

Relocation of the core elements within the building away from a cluster along the south facade to dispersed within the floor plate.

The application of a frit pattern on the windows tracked the movement of the sun against the building to allow for reduced glare and solar gain while maintaining abundant natural daylight.

The creation of collaborative learning environments throughout the building. In the design of the floor plan, (unfortunately) the original architects had stacked all core elements, elevators, stairs, toilet rooms, and mechanical and electrical rooms along the tight inside radius of the plan.

This was done even though all of the building elevations are consistently almost all glazing.

This original organizational decision provided greater leasing depths for the rest of the plan, but it also completely blocked all-natural daylight along the south elevation of the building.

To achieve any sense of consistent daylight the core elements had to be relocated.

The design team moved the core elements about 1/3 the depth of the plan into the center of the building.

This move created a datum where 2/3 of the building depth could now be devoted to classrooms, and the remaining 1/3 of the plan is left free for circulation and open collaborative learning spaces.

The second challenge involved the building elevations and the overabundance of glazing. While glazing on all sides is appealing for single-purpose use, like office space, it is ultimately unresponsive to environmental conditions and school programming where different uses require different amounts of natural light.

To solve this problem, and without altering the fenestration or composition of the original building, the architects designed a graduated frit pattern that offsets the solar gain on each elevation of the building.

This fritted pattern follows the path of the sun with the density of the frit varying depending on where the glazing receives the most sun exposure over the course of a year.

The frit pattern provides dynamic and diffuse light as a principle of biophilic design.

The frit is located on the 2nd layer of glazing reducing solar gain and visual glare on the interior while maintaining the fenestration pattern of the building’s original design.

Project Based Learning is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge.

With its abundant collaborative learning spaces, the project supports the school system’s desire for to implement Project Based Learning as an updated educational pedagogy.

No longer are fixed classrooms the only container for learning.

The design allows for learning to flow unobstructed from classrooms to flexible learning zones furnished to facilitate independent study or group collaboration.

Project: Washington Liberty High School Annex
Architects: studio27architecture
General Contractor: MCN Build, Inc.
Client: Arlington Public Schools
Photographers: HDP Studio