Noble Endeavor
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| Flooded with natural light, the two-story town square is the center of activity. The staircase features a small balcony, which was added at the request of the choral director so her group could perform a cappella during the day. Photo credit: James R. Salomon Photography |
Noble High School, the largest high school in the state of Maine, sits on 141 acres in North Berwick, a small town in the southern part of the state and very close to the New Hampshire border. The 270,000-square-foot school serves about 1,000 students who also come from the neighboring towns of Berwick and Lebanon. It is a rural area and the district, Maine School Administrative District #60, is so spread out that it boasts the second most bus miles in the state.
Design and construction of the new high school was viewed as an opportunity to bring the community closer together. Architects at Harriman Associates in Auburn, Maine, designed the $33.6 million facility to be the hub of the three towns while also creating an educational center that allowed the district to continue its education reforms-reforms that brought students from the bottom third to the top third in state achievement testing. The district, one of about 1,000 in the U.S. that belongs to the Coalition of Essential Schools*, focuses on project-based, team teaching.
Accommodating the special teaching teams resulted in a layout of 15 separate, 100-student “communities” within the school, which also helps breakup the school’s massing and makes this large facility feel-and function-like a much smaller school. In addition to the classroom units, the facility provides space for community functions, including adult education, a health clinic, day care center, one of the largest performing arts theaters in the region, and a restaurant run by culinary arts students.
The Planning Process
Noble High School opened in September 2001 but planning, design, and construction took almost six years. Even longer, if you consider that the district began its affiliation with the Coalition of Essential Schools in 1990 and had, since that time, wanted a new facility to accommodate their teaching methods. The previous high school, built in the early 1960s and designed for about 600 students, was not set up for a team-teaching approach and, in addition, was terribly overcrowded. In 1995, the student population totaled 900 and the space crunch put the district at the top of the state’s list for school construction funds.
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PROJECT DATA Architect/Engineer: Harriman Associates |
A yearlong planning process proceeded the design of Noble High School, and everyone in the community was invited to participate. Three public forums were held, numerous presentations were made at school board meetings, surveys and questionnaires were sent out, and the school board appointed a “future planning committee” made up of about 15-20 faculty members. Even students were asked to contribute ideas. “The design was developed in a truly democratic process,” says architect Daniel Cecil. “We had hundreds of hours of meetings and ideas to sift through,” he continues, but “ideas and plans came quickly and we had a clear philosophical idea of what the district wanted because of the coalition membership.”
The district’s five guiding principles, as established by the planning committee and guided by coalition membership are:
- Abolish anonymity by creating schools within schools
- Make spaces reflect the concept of teacher as coach and student as worker
- Make sure the building aids in a curriculum that is collaboratively designed, interdisciplinary, and project-based
- Create a school that serves as a community center and embraces the community so functions are integrated with educational functions
- Create a school that is flexible in design, materials, and function
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| Multiple shapes, heights, and recesses work together to mask Noble High School’s large proportions. Note the clock tower and decorative brick work. |
Over a four-month period, 25 different schemes were presented and reviewed and finally, in the summer of 1996, the decision was made to create the 100-student villages-and a turning point in the school’s planning and design was reached. According to architect Daniel Cecil, “our biggest achievement is the 100-student planning unit and we spent more time designing those communities than the whole school combined.” However, it took some convincing to get the state of Maine to fund the project. The state is used to seeing large schools broken down into smaller units, but usually in the 400-700 student range. Noble High School’s 100-student units were a new concept and one that required additional square footage, making the project larger than other schools Maine was financing. The state had to be equitable in its school project funding but this school, larger than the others, received its funding. “The Department of Education deserves a lot of credit,” says Cecil.
In fact, the entire process, from design, to bidding-the bid market was good and they got all their alternatives-to construction, and finally completion moved along almost effortlessly. “Everything came together,” says Cecil. “It was like we were under a halo from the very beginning.”
School Design
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| Windowed corridors are wide enough for benches, offering students a place to gather or study. Heating elements are located behind the seating areas. |
While the school’s interior is broken down into smaller communities, the exterior of a 270,000-square-foot school can appear massive. However, Noble High School is designed to appear smaller than it is because the building is composed of diverse forms that give the building a more human scale. There’s a vertical clock tower, curved walls, and various wings that hide larger, more massive pieces of the building. When you approach the school, these wings-combined with trees-hide up to 60 percent of the building.
The building’s wings never shroud it in shadows; its south/southeast orientation allows sunlight to move across the façade during the entire school day. In fact, capturing and using that sunlight was a requirement of the district, which wanted the school to “feel open and spacious and filled with natural light,” says Cecil. To accommodate the request, extra-wide corridors were moved to outside walls and lined with windows. Benches-with heating units underneath-are placed in front of the windows so students have a light-filled and warm spot to sit-even in Maine’s frosty winters. Classrooms also get large windows and there are skylights in the “town square” and the cafeteria. “You are never more than a few feet from a pool of light,” explains Cecil.
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First Floor Plan Legend 1. Learning community |
The skylit, two-story town square, just inside the main entrance, is the main organizing space and the point where all academic communities connect. The library and 1,000-seat theatre also connect to this space, as does the cafeteria, which has a wall of windows looking into the space. Three display cases are included for North Berwick, Berwick, and Lebanon; each town maintains its own exhibits.
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| Lunch is served in The Round Table, a 50-seat restaurant that is open to the public. Students in culinary arts programs master their trade by cooking for the customers. |
The academic communities themselves are made up of the 15 aforementioned 100-student learning communities. An interdisciplinary team of four teachers instruct students in math, science, English, and social studies, and the multiple spaces accommodate varied educational approaches. Each community has two classrooms, a science lab, a large multi-purpose room, a project room, and offices for both administrative and small-group use. Each student has a mailbox within their community and lockers are also located there rather than in hallways. The rooms vary in size and function and moveable partitions can create larger spaces. In the science rooms, gas and water lines are located on outside walls to accommodate mobile lab tables. Multi-purpose spaces have built-in display areas; peer review is an important part of the school’s educational program and these areas make it easy to highlight student projects. Many of the school’s more than 2,000 data ports are located within the communities.
Community Use
There is no defining line between student space and community space-each group has equal access to Noble High School.
Students enrolled in the two-year culinary arts program have the opportunity to practice their trade while cooking for patrons eating at The Round Table, a 50-seat restaurant with its own entrance and located just off the town square. The restaurant is separate from the school’s cafeteria and has its own kitchen stocked with commercial cooking equipment. It is open to the community during school hours.
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| The 1,000-seat theatre is one of the largest venues in the surrounding area. It is designed to accommodate both student and professional productions. |
A community medical clinic has a separate entrance and provides health care for the high school students as well as for children within the district. Through an arrangement with the local hospital, a nurse practitioner is at the school five days a week. Additional funding is in the works so the clinic can broaden its coverage and provide health care for anyone in the community.
An adult education center also has a separate entrance and offers continuing education programs to community members. A full-day childcare center is available to watch children while parents are enrolled in those continuing education classes-or to serve those with jobs and in need of day care.
The 1,000-seat theatre is equipped to attract large-scale productions as well as those produced by the school. Originally, the theatre looked as if it would have only 500 seats because that’s what the state of Maine was willing to fund. Hoping to double the theatre’s size, the district passed a referendum allowing them to pay for 500 additional seats. Fittings include a sophisticated lighting and sound system and full-fly galley rigging.
The school’s large library/ media center, an audio-visual center, television studio and editing room, two gymnasiums, and fitness center also are open for community use.
Innovative Solutions
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| Group workstations replace individual desks in the classroom, one of two in each community. Large windows offer views of the surrounding woods. |
Many innovative solutions at Noble High School are not as visible as its design features.
Because Maine’s winters can be harsh-and its summers equally grueling-engineers at Harriman Associates air conditioned parts of the school for summer use and placed all HVAC equipment indoors. The indoor location keeps the equipment from suffering exposure and makes it easier to maintain. Backup generators are setup to supply power and heat to the largest gymnasium and to the cafeteria, allowing them to serve as a community shelter in case of an emergency.
One of the school’s most usual innovations cannot be seen-nor can it be smelled. The high school’s plumbing system connects to public water and sewer lines and anaerobic bacteria could cause the material to be rather odorous by the time it reaches its connection, about two miles away from the facility. The problem was solved by creating a mini-wastewater treatment system at the school where materials are treated with compressed air and industrial-grade milk of magnesia. The treated waste, once at tolerable odor levels, is then pumped into the pipes on its way to the public sewage lines.
Open to All
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PROJECT SUPPLIERS Construction Materials: HVAC/Controls: Miscellaneous: Furniture: Carpet and Flooring: Lighting Security/Fire Safety Washroom Equipment/ Supplies Physical Education Equipment |
Currently, Noble High School has about 1,200 students and, while it was designed to serve 1,500, it also can be expanded to include an additional 800 9th-12th graders. As for members of the community, there’s no figure yet on how many regularly find themselves using the school, but attendance is high; residents in these three rural communities are making good use of their new “urban” center.
* To learn more about the Coalition of Essential Schools, visit the organization’s Web site: www.essentialschools.org