Perth Amboy school district represents a potential prototype paralleling the rapidly changing academic, community and social environments of the 21st century. Today’s community based schools are utilized for a multitude of functions and events – well beyond the traditional programs used in the past. Our proposal seeks to not only engage and enhance the academic experience, but actively create unique opportunities for social and communal connections to emerge in the experience of the “High School of the 21st Century.”

As the gap between schools and workplaces shrink, the influence of project and team-base leaning becomes more relevant. The new school should act as a learning center where education is facilitated by teachers and the learning environment. The establishment of individual educational learning “modules” (ELM) provides an environment that builds upon the concept of team based learning, while humanizing the overall scale of an otherwise immense building program. Students will engage in school settings that are more intimate, i.e. the school within a school model and Educational Learning Modules (ELM).

Our proposal addresses three scales for the city of Perth Amboy: Vehicular, Contextual and Pedestrian. From a distance, the building elicits an architecturally dynamic image. Approaching from the highway the building emerges from the landscape and the surrounding neighborhoods as an interactive and engaging facility. The building responds contextually as a physical and metaphorical gateway to the community by creating an opportunity for social exchange in external and internal environment. The pedestrian focus occurs as a series of articulated architectural gestures; event plazas promote an extension of the learning centers social and communal relationship. Multipurpose programmatic elements exist along the periphery of the event plazas, enabling an open and direct dialogue to exist between the school and community. Supervisory concerns are addressed through direct placement of administrative functions adjacent to these public areas.

Learning is constantly evolving and improving , through the use of technology, in the classroom and construction. From technical to aesthetic treatments, our proposal utilizes environmentally responsible building materials and mechanical systems. From wireless classroom areas to photovoltaic power sources, the facility creates an open physical dialogue that embraces these emerging concepts.