Completion Date:     8/16/2014

Square Footage:      64000

Building Use:           Educational / High School

Location:                 San Diego, CA

Project Description:

Design Challenge
Provide a sustainable educational environment intentionally designed for project based curriculum.
Design Solution
This project is a high school that emphasizes personalized learning while developing a creative
Campus approach, within the sixth and seventh floors of a new Downtown Public Library. The
School is a collision-rich educational setting, with student-owned and self-directed opportunities for
Learning. Designed components include:
• Entry Park: A passive ‘living room’ setting with controllable lighting, soft furniture and technology integration
• Plaza: An active gathering space on the seventh floor for presentation, performance, and dining
• The Steps: Connecting the two floors, the central stair doubles as a social learning space
• Interactive Wall: Linking the villages, the students can display on, write on and even sit on this connecting element
• Gallery: Celebrating the process of project development and curated by students, this is a canvas for student achievement.
Studios are organized in grade level villages clustered around a shared commons and team room. The design principles for the learning environment centralized around three ideas; personalization, social connections and flexibility. Linking students around and through the interactive wall, the organization of educational space is curriculum driven. The design team created overlays of circulation diagrams to study how students might move throughout the day, allowing for pull-out pockets and display opportunities that take advantage of otherwise passing-only space. Each zone went through planning considerations using five characteristics for design; environment, ownership, acoustics, furniture and technology.

Sustainability
The story of e3 civic high school began with a mission to sustainably connect education and community. Because more than 50% of high school students in downtown San Diego were commuting to surrounding neighborhoods to attend school, e3 responds to a need: providing an innovative educational opportunity in an urban setting where students could walk, bike, and use public transportation to school. The school received a LEED CI Gold rating in January 2015 with sustainable features as follows:

• Located within a LEED Silver building the e3 occupies floors 6 and 7 in the main library for the City of San Diego. The charter school is a model for urban development where shared resources for play and athletic fields reduced the school’s footprint.
• The school’s unique downtown location provides easy access to many downtown amenities and public transportation. As a result of the close proximity to the San Diego transit center hub, 85% of students arrive to school via bus and light rail reducing the largest single greenhouse-gas emissions source of the project: car commuting.
• The interiors have a do less attitude where the building’s structural system is left exposed and is treated as an accent in the classrooms and collaborative spaces. All classrooms meet STC requirements for LEED for schools and CHPS.
• By utilizing glazing in the core classrooms, natural daylight is borrowed from the perimeter common spaces resulting in reduced energy consumption and reliance on artificial lighting.
• Furniture specified with high performance recycled finishes and strategies for waste stream diversion of the products in the life cycle analysis.

C.O.T.E. | Committee on the Environment

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