Boora Architects

When the North Clackamas School District selected Boora to design this new high school, school officials had very basic goals: to create a functional facility and to respect the confines of a modest budget.  From within these modest goals, Boora developed a design that became the first LEED certified high school in the United States.  Using whole systems thinking, the design team integrated abundant daylighting, natural ventilation, and environmentally dynamic materials into a building that The Nation's architectural critic Jane Holz Kay called the most sustainable school in the country.

At the outset of the project, the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Energy Foundation selected Clackamas High School to serve as a national model for performance-based compensation, which provides additional fees for architects and engineers to motivate the realization of exceptional energy savings through innovative design strategies.  Organized in an east-west manner for optimal solar orientation, the building's outdoor courtyards narrow the floor plates of the building's four academic houses, accommodating natural daylighting and natural ventilation.

The 265,355-square-foot building is divided into four two-story academic houses with a shared library/media center. Between them, a central commons with administration and counseling services connects the academic houses to the fine and performing arts wing, the special education areas, support spaces, and physical education facilities.  Clerestories flood this space with daylight.

The high school is organized into small-scale academic houses which offer nurturing learning environments that emphasize flexibility, subject matter integration, instructional technology integration, and social spaces. Skylights and ventilation stacks on the roof of these academic houses flood the corridors with light.  Clerestory windows borrow that light for the classrooms, providing daylight to each classroom from two sides -- through the exterior windows and via the corridor.

Highly reflective Solatubes integrated into the second floor's casework channel light from the building's second floor to the first.  Many classrooms enjoy views of the Cascade range's Mt.  Hood on the horizon.

Light shelves that shade glass, thus protecting it from solar heat gain, also deflect light off their tops into the classrooms through transom windows above the light shelf units.  The ceilings in each classroom are angled to support the deflective delivery of light away from the windows, where daylight is abundant, to spaces further from a natural light source.

Boora's design team used extensive scale models -- including a full-scale model of a prototype daylit classroom -- and laboratory tests in the University of Oregon's Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory to refine the exterior wall details, the dimensions of the classroom, and the deflection angles of the ceiling.  This integration of exterior wall, interior clerestory windows, ceiling planes, and proportions reflects the whole system integrated design approach used to accomplish the building's high environmental performance.

Programs shared by all students in the school include a theater, a music room, a library, and a gymnasium which remains open after hours for community use.

The school's bike parking station integrates wiring for solar panels to be installed in the future.