Project Description
Blue Valley Southwest is a 300,000-square-foot high school serving 1,600 students on a 112-acre site in Overland Park, Kansas. The facility plan is organized around a courtyard, with all common spaces, theater lobby, administration, cafeteria, library, and cyber café opening directly onto this central space. At the heart of the academic zone are the media center and a distributed administrative suite which connects the outstretched wings of classrooms to the rest of the school. The school incorporates a below- floor, displaced air delivery system with improved indoor air quality and thermal comfort using less energy to deliver conditioned air. The building features generous natural day lighting, indirect lighting with higher ceilings, and daylight sensors. The design features locally produced materials, such as Kansas brick and limestone. The building was sited with careful attention to solar orientation to minimize heat gain while maximizing views. The scale of a large high school is reduced by a massing strategy that houses the program in distinct pavilions situated around the courtyard. Each pavilion has an identity symbolized by the shapes of the roofs: the library with a butterfly roof, the cafeteria with a gentle gable, and the theater with a single pitch.