Monticello High School
Charlottesville, VirginiaHGA provided the educational programming and design services for this project. This is the third high school for the sprawling Albermarle County School District surrounding Charlottesville. The school is located on a 100 acre hilly site with a large pond, just below Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. The school sits on a ridge overlooking a pond and distant Charlottesville. The 3 classroom houses are arranged in an "EL" and step down the hillside. An open court marks the entry and continues past the glass-enclosed forum to the playing fields beyond. The school facilities are grouped into smaller components to reduce the overall mass of the building and give each an identity and autonomy that harkens back to Jefferson's "academic village" on the University of Virginia campus. Each house contains approximately 330 students, 165 per level. Four classrooms open onto a daylit team resource and teacher planning area. Studios and labs flank either side of the corridor to facilitate school-wide student access. A two-story library opens up to woods, a natural spring and the pond below. The school will use it's site and facilities to teach and model sustainable design principals. Working with William McDonough, a national expert on sustainable architecture, a number of environmentally sensitive strategies were analyzed during the design process. These included natural daylighting, greywater recovery, stormwater run-off reduction, desiccant cooling, optimizing air quality, sustainable product research and specifications. All were analyzed for benefit, payback and evaluated as potential teaching tools. After careful review, a number of the sustainable concepts were integrated into the school's design and engineering systems.