Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Fairfax County Public Schools, Fairfax, Virginia
An imaginative approach to updating a 45-year-old building will accommodate the unique needs of exceptionally bright students.

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Solution

Early diagrams captured what the school needed most, and that is an area for social learning. TJHS's culture comes from its highly motivated, high-initiative students. Here, the entire building is a place for studying and learning. Rather than forcing students to meet in narrow corridors or confining the library within four walls or separating eating from learning, all of these social learning activities need to be intertwined in a single, centrally located area within the building. The team's most important decision was to create a central wing as a social learning core for the entire school, with student lounges, the cafeteria and the library.

Gradually, other programmatic requirements became clear. Each senior at the high school takes on a major research project often in conjunction with a local government or private research facility. New and shared space is required for these research labs so large and small projects can be built. This lab needs to be transparent so students and visitors alike will pass it and constantly be aware of the innovative projects underway. At the charrette, a new three-story senior research center began to take shape at the main entrance of the building, with labs opening into large project spaces.

Solution perspectives
The new addition takes the form of a central wing that runs through the middle of the existing building. Perspectives show the Research Center (top) and the social learning core (above).

Another need is a place for multi-disciplinary learning programs within the school to support the interweaving of disciplines across the curricula. That area of the building had to have dedicated space designed to bring specific, yet disparate learning environments into close proximity to one another and needed a loose configuration of shared large and small group instruction spaces, lab spaces, project rooms, and associated support areas for equipment.

The final piece of the puzzle was the budget. Because a budget for the project had already been established, the team was determined to retain the strengths of the existing facility while not shortchanging the requirements of the proposed addition.

The solution was to demolish the center of the existing building, the library, and the planetarium. In their place a single new structure would be built, extending from the front through the middle and out the rear. In the center of this structure would be the wide-open, multilevel Social Learning Core, a space where students would mingle, eat, study, and carry out many of their daily school activities. The normal library functions would take place here but without walls. The space would open out into two courtyards, and connect easily with all the other parts of the school.

The Multi-disciplinary Center would extend from the Social Learning Core toward the back of the site. A new entrance to the school and the Senior Research Center would extend from the Social Learning Core toward the front of the site. This new addition would create a new face for the school, be cost-effective to create, and cause minimal disturbance to ongoing programs within the building.