The new West Orange Relief High School has a construction budget of approximately $70 million, and will be located in the a 17-acre site within the West Windermere Rural Settlement. The 385,000-square-foot prototype school will be able to accommodate nearly 2,800 students upon completion.

Although the facility is much needed, gaining approval from the Orange County Commissioners has proven to be both a lengthy and challenging process. The commissioners initially denied plans for the relief high school two years ago due to potential issues regarding traffic and noise.

However, commissioners, residents and school proponents were able to reach a compromise, ensuring restrictions on school signage, bleachers and portable classrooms. Noise restrictions will also require that band practice end no later than 8 p.m., and both a wall and tree buffer zone will serve as added mufflers. The school’s sports stadium will also be located off-site in a shared recreation complex to avoid further noise and lighting impacts on nearby residents.

“Good planning and good zoning is all about giving people some reasonable expectation as to what is going to happen around them. …Unfortunately, by the time we got to this point, we didn’t have any other options as a board,” Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs told News 13.

The relief high school is scheduled for both completion and opening in 2017. The district will begin drafting a redistricting plan in 2016.

Also suffering from overcrowding, Orange County’s Avalon Park Middle School in east Orlando’s Avalon Park community now has a population of 1,800 students, though it was originally built for a maximum of 970. In an effort to ease overcrowding, the Orange County School Board voted on June 9 to purchase 12 acres of land to add to the school’s existing 16.7-acre site. Here, the school board hopes to build an additional, nearly $40 million relief middle school.

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School Construction News spoke with Daniel M. Tarczynski, AIA, partner at SchenkelShultz Architecture of Orlando, Fla., about this evolution of higher-education design.

Q: What are some of the latest trends in school design?

Tarczynski: The needs of today’s university students have changed dramatically. This evolution stems from changes in pedagogy, student expectations and an influx of mobile technology. De-vices such as iPads, smartphones, tablets and laptops have dramatically affected the way infor-mation is accessed. Every space, even those beyond the traditional classroom, has become a “learning” space. The development of environments that are adaptable and infused with technol-ogy has created a richer and more personalized learning environment for students in the 21st cen-tury.

Recognizing that learning today occurs everywhere, in formal academic environments, as well as between classes, at the local cafe and even outdoors, we have to design differently. We look to create student collaboration nooks and casual seating areas with a variety of flexible, moveable furniture options to encourage information collaboration and idea sharing.

Q: What are some of the biggest drivers in school design today?

Tarczynski: Collaboration is key and one of the biggest drivers in higher-education design. Cre-ating informal and formal collaboration spaces that also have integrated technology drive the de-sign for 21st century students. Another driver is adaptable classrooms, which allow for students to have active learning spaces with various learning modalities, such as small group, one-to-one instruction, media based and teaming.

Q: As the idea of collaborative learning expands, how does design change?

Tarczynski: Today, you need to think of the classroom as having the physical flexibility to change to allow for collaborative learning to succeed. Sliding walls, glass walls that students can write on and adaptable furniture are some examples. A deeper understanding of acoustic design and its relationship to appropriate sound levels is important, too.

Q: Does green building continue to be a priority, and in what way?

Tarczynski: Actually, green building design is now so entrenched in the design of higher-educational buildings that it is now more about the actual practical applications. Clients today are very knowledgeable about green building design, and they have numerous buildings already on their campuses that have utilized green design. Therefore, they expect their buildings to be de-signed using green principles. However, the bigger issue is maximizing their return on the in-vestment.

Q: What is the future of school design?

Tarczynski: It is ever changing and I think higher-educational buildings will be the social and technological hubs for learning. They will be comfortable with adaptable learning devices, and collaboration spaces will be abundant, adaptable to future needs and more efficient in green ap-plications.

Read more about school design trends in the March/April issue of School Construction News. The Design Roundtable section will feature similar interviews with architects from MVE + Partners; ADD Inc., now with Stantec; KSQ Architects; and DLR Group.

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According to the DoDEA, 21st Century Schools specifically support 21st Century Teaching and Learning, a student-centered approach to education that builds on responsive and inclusive teaching to engage students through technology and the environment. As such, DoDEA seeks to develop schools that are both flexible and adaptable, facilitating new and innovative ways to deliver instruction and meet the educational needs of all students. Also emphasized are curriculum delivery, use of technology and the growing expectations for sustainability and energy conservation.
Educational facilities that support the 21st Century Teaching and Learning model are built to function as teaching tools, with systems and components exposed to provide real world relevance and examples to reinforce STEM curriculums. Building designs and standards as related to the DoDEA’s 21st Century Educational Facilities, are guided by “prudent, fiscally responsible thought processes that will result in flexible, adaptable, student-centered and technology infused learning environments that will have an anticipated lifespan of nearly 50 years,” according to department literature.
These student-centered, energy-efficient facilities also accommodate multiple learning modalities, and allow the buildings to grow and adapt with the school programs. The DoDEA plans to transition the majority of its schools across the United States and Europe to the 21st Century Teaching and Learning model.
SchenkelShultz has already designed more than 50 million square feet of K-12 schools, including more than 4.3 million square feet of DoDEA 21st Century Schools. The firm’s previous work for the department includes the newly constructed Evans and Oak Ridge High Schools, in Orange County, Fla., as well as the recently announced University of Florida P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School’s New Middle/High School Building.

Currently, SchenkelShultz is designing four new schools on U.S. Army and Air Force bases in Germany, and is in the programming and planning stages for six additional projects within the U.S. and Europe. The expansion has required SchenkelShultz’s Orlando-based education design team to add two new employees to accommodate its state-of-the-art workload. SchenkelShultz President and COO, Tom Chandler, AIA, estimates the firm’s partnership with the Department of Defense has created a $3 million to $4 million economic impact in central Florida architectural and engineering fees, including those to local sub-consultants.

The DoDEA is now in the midst of a major construction and renovation program that will eventually result in the replacement or renovation of more than 70 percent of its 194 schools. DoDEA currently has 49 projects in design, with eight more in construction. During the last year DoDEA has initiated 40 school designs and made five school construction awards. In the upcoming year, the department anticipates an additional 21 designs and 13 construction awards. The Department of Defense and Congress have allocated a nearly $3.7 billion increase to the DoDEA construction program over the next five years.

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The $22 million project is designed by Orlando, Fla.-based SchenkelShultz Architecture in association with New York-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects. Midway, Fla.-based Ajax Building Corporation is serving as the general contractor on the project.

The 56,200-square-foot building will give the undergraduate business program at the University of Florida one dedicated location for undergraduate students to learn. The current business program is spread out among several other buildings.

“This is a 21st century higher education building,” said J. Thomas Chandler, AIA, president and chief operating officer of SchenkelShultz Architecture. “The whole purpose of this new home was to create this collaborative and interactive environment for students and faculty. This gives them the opportunity to implement significant goals and objectives that the administration has for 21st century higher education.”

The new building, slated for completion in September 2014, is organized around three floors, Chandler said. The first floor encompasses a student commons area, with a very collaborative and technology-rich environment. This floor includes other support functions such as multipurpose areas and a small cafeteria. Chandler described the floor as one where “students interact with students.”

Students collaborate with faculty and staff on the second floor, Chandler said. The second floor will have an academic success center that allows for interactive instructional learning and gives the students the opportunity to work directly with academic advisers or teaching assistants on a much smaller scale outside of the classroom. This teaching floor will also house a series of larger scale classrooms. The third floor will house the dean’s suite, the international program and serve as a hub for career development.

“As you move up in the building, the first floor is more student-activity centric, the second floor is student-faculty related and the third floor is more related to faculty with these specialty programs,” Chandler said.

Designed to achieve LEED Gold certification, the building also incorporates green elements such as an HVAC system that has a chilled-beam approach. The design team was also able to take advantage of the master campus storm-draining system that is already in place at the university. Plus, the building will have a highly insulated roof, walls and glazing systems.

The most difficult part of the project, Chandler said, was designing it to fit the collegiate gothic style of architecture that makes up the historic district on the campus, where the new business school is located. Plus, he said the building is being constructed on an incredibly tight site, so being able to meet the historic guidelines and fit it into the campus utility infrastructure also became a challenge.

The design team used Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology to optimize efficiencies and constructability. Using this software, they will also be able to provide a “smart” record model of the building at completion, which will help the maintenance and operations staff maintain the building in the future.

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