dark brown doors. That dark brown was a standard paint color. The maintenance department didn’t want to have a different color to worry about. They were the most depressing buildings I’d ever seen. Walking into them would make me just cringe. We took the information from that meeting and developed a new prototype. If I were to rebuild it today, it would be completely different, but at the time, in the late ‘90s/early 2000s, it was really stepping outside the norm. The classrooms went out in wings from the main corridor, and every classroom had large, spacious windows. We learned through the architects’ research the value of natural daylighting — the effects that it had on a person’s psyche and in learning. With just natural daylighting, a student can do 10% better on their test scores. That first prototype had open ceilings. The board was upset that they had given us so much money — $87 a square foot — and we couldn’t afford ceilings. We had to go back and put the ceilings in, which was unfortunate. All that structure and pipework had the prettiest paint on it. Over time, we were able to expose some of the structure of the buildings, and we added more and more glass. For me, the culmination was Farmington High School. It has floor to ceiling glass. This was at a time when school shootings were frequent, and that floor-to-ceiling glass was causing a lot of angst with my bosses and some of the local law enforcement. We brought in a group from Georgia to evaluate the school, and also invited Farmington City Fire and Police. I remember standing outside the building, and the police (chief?) said, “You will never sell me on the safety of this building.” I said, “Wait until you go through it.” After the tour, we met out in the parking lot again, and he said, “This is probably one of the safest buildings I’ve ever been in.” We took 12 samples of glass out to a shooting range. The police couldn’t even breach that glass with some of the tools they had at their disposal. Design goals and challenges? I always wanted children to want to go to school, to not be afraid to go in that front door, and I wanted the media center in the front of the building. In all of the H plans, the media center was buried in the central part of the school and had no windows. Having the media center in the front of the building allows people to see that education is going on without seeing directly into the classroom. They always want blinds to block bright sun in the morning, which makes sense, but we found they wouldn’t open the blinds; they got complacent. We went into a junior high school, and the blinds in the media center were closed to an interior courtyard. My director, Bryan Turner, and I opened all the blinds. We discovered there were bullet holes in the glass. I asked the library director, “How long have these bullet holes been here?” She said, “Well, I don’t know.” I asked, “How long have you been here?” And she said, “Ten years.” “You’ve never opened the blinds in ten years?” She said, “No.” So, we got blinds that diminish the glare, but even when they’re closed, you can still see what’s going on outside. Farmington High School exterior (top) and interior (bottom) Horizon Junior High School, West Point 11
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