BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The DLR Group will provide integrated master planning, architecture and interior design services for the long-awaited Beverly Hills High School (BHHS) Modernization Project.

The project entails a complete modernization that includes additions to the 510,000-square-foot school’s B1, B2, B3 and B4 buildings.

In what BHHS calls a “full structural seismic retrofit,” the new campus will be a combination of modernized existing buildings as well as new buildings, designed to harmonize with the original 1928 building. Significant work will be done to Building B1 and Building B2 in Phase 1 of the modernization project. Construction for B1 will include a new media center, new college and career centers, new public restrooms, teacher workrooms, staff offices, and a reading center.

Construction for B2 will include 10 Classrooms with flexible partition walls, new public restrooms, conference and workrooms, speech and independent study areas, principal and staff offices, counseling center, and an ASB Center. The Beverly Hills Unified School District (BHUSD) contracted the DLR Group as the Architect of Record for the project in July of 2012.

SCN originally covered this project back in November of 2011 when the DLR Group won a conceptual design competition by a unanimous vote of judges to modernize Beverly Hills High School at an estimated cost of $150 million. Since then, Karen MacIntyre, RA, LEED AP BD+C with the DLR Group, says that renovations on the first two buildings B1 and B2 are currently underway, and are scheduled for completion in 2021.

The DLR Group and BHUSD officials remain tight-lipped about the project, as a lawsuit has been filed against the Federal Transit Administration and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for a different kind of construction project underground.

The Los Angeles County Metro has plans to drill a subway tunnel 70 feet below BHHS at the same time construction of the modernization project, which started back in April, continues for the next 30 months.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a $9-billion subway extension, commonly referred to as the “Purple Line,” will be broken up into three phases that includes connecting the current terminus in Koreatown to Beverly Hills and Century City by 2025.

In January, the school district announced that it was filing a lawsuit against the FTA, and the Metro, but is still moving forward with plans for the modernization on BHHS.

“The primary impact will be on B1 and B2 because they go directly under B1 and B2,” said Terry Tao, an attorney representing BHUSD. “The only impact on those buildings would be sound and vibration.”

At full build-out, nearly the entire 24-acre site at BHHS will be redeveloped to maximize usable area for regulation-sized athletic fields, and to create a pedestrian-focused campus by placing parking underground.

The Swim Gym made famous in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” will be restored, and a new pedestrian plaza will replace the existing Heath Avenue that cuts through the campus. New educational specifications will guide the development of innovative 21st Century learning environments, focused on learning villages and flexible common space. The facility program includes three different theaters, a highly advanced TV studio, a robotics lab, an art gallery/welcome center, a fitness club, a planetarium, new gymnasiums and athletic fields, and an Olympic-size aquatics facility.

Tao said that Phase 1 is currently in the “construction document approval phase,” and that plans for buildings B3 and B4 are forthcoming.

“Eventually we’re going to do [Building] A, but that’s not on their agenda yet,” said Tao.

A report from the Los Angeles Times contributed to this story.

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PS/IS 342, also known as The Riverside Center School, is a new public school that will occupy the first four floors of a New York City skyscraper.

The New York City School Construction Authority selected locally based Dattner Architects to design the school within Extell’s Riverside Center mixed-use development on Manhattan’s west side. The school will serve 488 pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students. It will feature more than 20 new classrooms, art and music rooms and a science suite, along with a library, gymnasium and cafeteria.

“What usually happens is, (the School Construction Authority) sees there’s a need for a new school because of the projected number of school age youngsters,” said a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Education. “They also look at schools in the neighborhood and utilization rates to determine whether a new school is needed.”

The project’s design will meet the Green Schools Guide, a LEED-equivalent system used for all NYC public school capital projects that Dattner Architects developed for the NYC School Construction Authority, officials from the firm said.

International design firm Atelier Christian de Portzamparc Architects and New York-based SLCE Architects designed the high-rise tower.
Dattner officials said the design and construction of the core and shell of the Riverside Center and the school interiors is being closely coordinated. Construction is expected to begin in 2014 and the school plans to open for September 2015 occupancy.

Authority officials said they have similar private-public partnerships like the planned PS/IS 342, including a Lower Manhattan school opening in September as part of a residential building and a similar project in East Harlem.

“It’s not unusual — though kind of rare in Manhattan — just because of real estate being very scarce,” a spokesperson for the School Construction Authority said. “That’s why we look for creative ways to build schools. There’s really no more vacant land in Manhattan and working with public private partnerships fills that void.”

Design features require working with the architect of the entire project to include specific features like a separate entrance for school operations.

The firm previously designed a number of projects for the New York City School Construction Authority, including PS/IS 276 The Battery Park City School and PS 79 Creston Academy Addition, both of which opened in the fall of 2010.

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