Oracle Corporation’s Redwood Shores Headquarters is in the process of receiving a new addition the likes of which a tech company campus has never seen before; a high school.
Design Tech High School (d.tech) will be the first high school in the country located on a tech company’s campus. The 64,000-sf, two-story building has a fabrication lab designed as the heart of the new facility. The two-story lab, called the Design Realization Garage, will house heavy fabrication on the first floor and digital prototyping on the second floor. An internal elevator will move projects between the two spaces.
Modular learning neighborhoods are located on the east and west wings of the building and feature four interconnected classrooms that utilize movable partitions and furniture. Collaboration spaces are incorporated along the main circulation corridors of the building. These corridors, dubbed the California Corridors, provide unobstructed views of San Francisco Bay and the surrounding shoreline. Three enclosed outdoor spaces on the ground level and two rooftop decks provide outdoor settings for education.
Rendering courtesy of DES Architects + Engineers.
Oracle is providing the land and building the facility, but the school will be a fully autonomous public high school. The Oracle Conference Center and the main pedestrian promenade on campus connect directly to d.tech’s entrance. The Conference Center will provide a venue for the school’s large gatherings and performances. The existing Oracle kitchen will provide food for the students and the company’s fitness center will be utilized part-time for d.tech’s physical education programs.
As part of the project, existing community trails will be improved and new segments will be added to the San Francisco Bay Trail. Nearly two new acres of improved outdoor space will be available for the public.
Design Tech High School is targeting LEED for Schools Gold and is currently under construction. The DES Architects + Engineers-designed facility is scheduled to open in January 2018.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Joint-Use Facilities Where Everybody Benefits
Shouldn’t major financial investments in new schools benefit both the students and the greater community? Conventional wisdom says yes, of course. That logic explains the growing interest in joint-use schools—innovative facilities designed with shared spaces that address the education needs of students and the community’s need for social, recreation, and civic spaces.
| Aug 11, 2010
Education's Big Upgrade
Forty-five percent of the country's elementary, middle, and high schools were built between 1950 and 1969 and will soon reach the end of their usefulness, according to the 2005–2008 K-12 School Market for Design & Construction Firms, published by ZweigWhite, a Massachusetts-based market-research firm.
| Aug 11, 2010
Burr Elementary School
In planning the Burr Elementary School in Fairfield, Conn., the school's building committee heeded the words of William Wordsworth: Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher. They selected construction manager Turner Construction Company, New York, and the New York office of A/E firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to integrate nature on the heavily wooded 15.
| Aug 11, 2010
Bronze Award: Trenton Daylight/Twilight High School Trenton, N.J.
The story of the Trenton Daylight/Twilight High School is one of renewal and rebirth—both of the classic buildings that symbolize the city's past and the youth that represent its future. The $39 million, 101,000-sf urban infill project locates the high school—which serves recent dropouts and students who are at risk of dropping out—within three existing vacant buildings.
| Aug 11, 2010
New school designs don't go by the book
America needs more schools. Forty-five percent of the nation's elementary, middle, and high schools were built between 1950 and 1969, according market research firm ZweigWhite, Natick, Mass. Yet even as the stock of K-12 schools ages and declines, school enrollments continue to climb. The National Center for Education Statistics predicts that enrollment in public K-12 schools will keep rising...
| Aug 11, 2010
Bronze Award: Lincoln High School Tacoma, Wash.
Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Wash., was built in 1913 and spent nearly a century morphing into a patchwork of outdated and confusing additions. A few years ago, the Tacoma School District picked Lincoln High School, dubbed “Old Main,” to be the first high school in the district to be part of its newly launched Small Learning Communities program.
| Aug 11, 2010
Bronze Award: Hawthorne Elementary School, Elmhurst, Ill.
At 121 years, Hawthorne School is the oldest elementary school building in the Elmhurst, Ill., school district and a source of pride for the community. Unfortunately, decades of modifications and short-sighted planning had rendered it dysfunctional in terms of modern educational delivery. At the same time, increasing enrollment was leading to overcrowding, with the result that the library, for ...
