Paul Stevens, Senior Principal

Rebuilding a new state of the art secondary school on the same site of an existing 1960’s high school has presented an interesting and challenging opportunity to immediately affect facility renewal changes in this Northern Ontario community.  The creation of this new school brings together two under-enrolled high schools into a 180,000 sf two-storey school that places a curriculum emphasis on healthy active living, trades based technology programs and international languages instruction. 

The design of the school is organized around a collective assembly space referred to as the Student Forum, which is the social, physical and psychological centre of the school.  Serving a broad cross section of the community, students with special needs are given their own learning area, and Grades 7 & 8 students will also be part of this new school community.  The re-planning of the site has also presented an opportunity to improve some urban design conditions within the City, and the school achieves this by creating a campus-like environment, with equal consideration for the student and public realm. 

Sustainable design features begin at the urban planning level of re-building within a downtown site and extend to include energy conservation savings 30% below Energy Codes (in association with MGP Architects).