Schools are considered high-risk environments for the transmission of infectious diseases due to the close and frequent contact that occurs among students and teachers. After the historic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, more schools are prioritizing public health in education.

Several studies and surveys have documented the presence of excessive bacterial burden in both high school and collegiate training room facilities. Athletic training rooms have a high prevalence of bacteria, including multidrug-resistant organisms, increasing the risk for both local and systematic infections in athletes. Adaptation of a hygiene protocol would lead to a reduction in bacterial and viral pathogen counts in these spaces, where close contact among athletes and, in the presence of poor hygiene and contamination, can predispose athletes to infection.

Despite the known potential for infection in the athletic training room, there remains a lack of knowledge among athletes, parents and athletic trainers about best practices to limit the spread of infection. To that end, schools are including advanced technologies such as ventilation, filtration, and lighting to help reduce infection-causing bacteria more safely, continuously and automatically.

Granite School District

Granite School District, located in the Salt Lake Valley, is the third-largest district in Utah and ranks among the largest public-school districts in the nation. Its boundary encompasses 257 square miles and includes 57 elementary schools, 15 junior high schools, eight high schools and other special schools and programs. With more than 60,000 students enrolled and aging school buildings dating over 100 years old, structural issues became a major challenge.

To address the problem of outdated and unsafe buildings, voters approved a $238-million bond in 2017 to fund the rebuilding and renovation of 31 schools over a 10-year period. In May 2019, the district announced plans to construct 21st century high schools to help students prepare for college and/or careers. Skyline and Cyprus High Schools, located in Millcreek and Magna, are included in the major strategic plans.

To provide equity between development of two different schools on different sites, architectural firms Fanning Howey, based in Indianapolis, and Naylor Wentworth Lund of Salt Lake City created a program focused on Granite School District’s central vision of flexibility, while allowing for customization at each site. The new facilities will have an emphasis on collaborative spaces, flexible learning environments, enhanced security and the ability to adapt to educational needs for decades to come.

Skyline High School, built in 1962, serves 2,156 students. Demolition and new construction is taking place in phases on the active campus, so students are not displaced. Construction began in November 2019 and is scheduled to end in December 2026.

Cyprus High School, with an enrollment of 2,650 students, opened its doors in 1918. The school is being rebuilt on a 60-acre location near Salt Lake Valley’s western foothills and is set to open in fall 2025. The district has worked with contractors for environmental remediation, geo-technical investigations and utilities planning. Construction was designed to take place in one continuous phase and began in November 2021.

Moving Forward

Over the course of several months, Fanning Howey and Naylor Wentworth Lund worked to redefine the district’s approach to high school education with similar plans for Skyline and Cyprus high schools.

“Early visioning and planning sessions involved district administrators as well as leaders and faculty from both schools, to build a common vision,” said Michael Hall, AIA, lead architect at Fanning Howey. “The design allows Granite [School District] to continue its departmental approach to high school education, but with an emphasis on next-generation learning.”

The resulting design creates flexible, open space at the center of each learning community. The team’s focus on flexibility continues in the athletic portions of the high schools. Instead of a traditional gymnasium, the design team created large fieldhouses with four courts, partitions and upper-level running tracks. Each high school will also have an eight-lane, 25-yard competition pool with seating for 500.

The schools’ athletic programs are an important part of their educational missions. Renovation plans include upgrades for the athletic program: new grass and turf fields, tennis courts, pool, stadium and baseball stadium as well as new athletics buildings at each of the high schools.

Added Technology Improves Health

A state-of-the-art athletics building constructed at Skyline High School was completed in late 2021, and a similar building is currently under construction at the new Cyprus High School campus. To help reduce the potential spread of infection, each athletic building includes disinfecting lighting that uses safe, visible light to kill harmful viruses and bacteria automatically and continuously in the air and on surfaces.

Quantum Lighting Group of Salt Lake City chose Indigo-Clean luminaires from Kenall Lighting to help protect students and staff against illness. Garrett Ledger, director of Specification Sales, Quantum Lighting Group, specified Indigo-Clean lighting, which employs blended white and indigo light, for its environmental disinfection system. Unlike ultraviolet light, Indigo-Clean luminaires are safe for room occupants.

“Indigo-Clean luminaires were selected to reduce bacteria and viruses in the new athletics buildings because the areas are more prone to these challenges,” said Ledger. “Ultimately, the lighting installation should help reduce the amount of illness in the schools. As a bonus beyond a reduction in bacteria, the district can anticipate low maintenance costs for the lighting because of the LED technology.”

The installation includes Indigo-Clean MLHA8 linear surface-mounted fixtures in locker rooms and pendant-mounted models in the weight room and wrestling room. Indigo-Clean HADL6 downlights were selected for the toilet stalls, dressing rooms and shower stalls. Indigo-Clean HASEDI recessed 1×4 fixtures will be installed in the cardio room.

“To complement the school’s forward-thinking design, we knew it was important to upgrade the lighting technology from what was in the previous athletic building. The Indigo-Clean luminaires provide bright illumination, and the sealed enclosure housing prevents harboring of bacteria inside the luminaires,” said Philip Borup, associate project manager, Envision Engineering.

Indigo-Clean lighting, a continuous disinfection technology, is patented and proven to kill harmful viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza-A, and bacteria linked to healthcare associated infections. Using a combination of 405nm Indigo and white LEDs, Indigo-Clean technology emits narrow-spectrum light that kills viruses and bacteria while providing ambient illumination.

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AVON LAKE, Ohio—The Avon Lake City Schools district is looking to enter into an agreement with design firm Fanning Howey for various upgrades to its schools. The architect had earlier performed work at the district’s Avon Lake High School.

According to of Elyria, the district is looking specifically at updating buildings at Learwood Middle School as well as several of the elementary schools under its purview. The district’s enrollment continues to increase, necessitating updating its various buildings. One of those upgrades is installing air conditioning units, which are needed during the stifling summer months encompassing the end of one school year and the commencement of the next.

According to the Chronicle, the district superintendent, Bob Scott, also pointed to other necessary projects including replacement of older boilers and reinforcing several roofs that have been exposed to weather.

Any plan conjured by Fanning Howey will need to go before the local board of education, who will then have to decide how said improvements to the school district would be funded. Meanwhile, a facilities planning committee has been meeting on several occasions to work with the architects on potential refurbishments district-wide, the Chronicle reported

Fanning Howey’s other education-related projects in the Buckeye State include Parkside Elementary and Riverview Elementary, which were the first schools in the state to achieve LEED version 4.0 certification.

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The hottest coffee shop in the city of Carmel, Ind., a suburban community just north of Indianapolis, isn’t located on Main Street or in a strip mall. It’s the Carmel CafĂ© & Market, a student-run coffee shop that is part of the DECA business program at Carmel High School. The renovation of the Carmel CafĂ© & Market, which was once a small spirit shop, is an excellent example of how to design for the needs of young entrepreneurs.

Treat Students as Owners

Student involvement in design is always important, but for entrepreneurial spaces, it is absolutely critical. Operational issues have a great impact on the design of a business space, and young entrepreneurs must learn to think through the impact of the built environment on efficiency and profit. At the Carmel Café & Market, the owners are the students, not the teachers, so their input was critical to the design process.

“This is not class where teachers run the business and students get credit for participating,” said Richard Reid, DECA advisor and IB Business Management teacher at Carmel High School. “This is truly a student-run business, so we made sure to use the design process as a learning opportunity.”

The design of the Carmel Café & Market renovations, completed in September 2017, involved multiple charrettes with students and their faculty advisors. Early sessions focused on operational issues and how the space would work. How will orders flow in and out? Where will customers queue up? How many back-of-house coffee stations do we need? How will customers exit? Students explored these issues and collaborated with architects and interior designers to find solutions. In addition to floor plans and renderings, students developed and reviewed flow patterns to create the optimum space for operations. Every aspect of the business received scrutiny, all the way down to the design of the frappe-making station.

Grace Marchese, a student at Carmel High School and director of operations for the Carmel Café & Market, was one of the stakeholders involved in the design charrettes.

“I learned how much thought goes into designing a space for a business,” Marchese said. “Every single detail matters, and it is these small details that build on one another to create the overall feel you want to have.”

The design team also worked with students to create signature spaces that reflect the Carmel Café & Market brand. Students reviewed design concepts and commented on branding, look and feel, efficiency and product placement. Based on student input, the design team added items such as a performance stage for student singers and musicians.

The collaborative process involving students not only resulted in a better design, but it also gave these young entrepreneurs a valuable experience in creating space for their own business.

Be Nimble

While the Carmel Café & Market is currently a coffee shop, the students and design team specifically focused on creating a flexible business lab that could serve multiple needs. This flexibility is crucial to allow students to respond to different market forces and to change their business model over time.

“Students can rearrange the space to improve operations and the customer experience,” said Reid. “And if they decide one day that their business model should change, the facility will accommodate a new kind of business.”

Some restaurant-related equipment is included in the design; however, the Carmel CafĂ© & Market is broken down into core spaces focused on teaching broad entrepreneurial skills. Flexible furniture allows students to be creative in how they arrange and rearrange space. A nearby marketing lab provides a board room–type setting for leadership and critical thinking. Presentation space and interactive technology tools give students the ability to engage in problem solving, teamwork and communications.

To read the entire article, check out the November/December issue of .

Andy Miller, AIA, is a project architect at Indianapolis-based Fanning Howey. Carla Remenschneider, RID, IIDA, is director of Interior Design at Fanning Howey.

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The British International School of Houston (BISH) has very strong . That’s why when the school decided to build a brand-new campus in Katy, Texas (located just west of Houston), this concept was woven into every design decision.

The curriculum and building itself are created entirely around the needs of the students and their learning, moving from a teacher-driven model to a learner-driven model. “For many years, schools have been built around the needs of the teachers,” said Andrew Derry, principal at BISH. “Teachers have their own room, with their own desk and their own white board, and students move from room to room as they get a year older or as they change subjects. At our campus, the learning environments are far more flexible than that and can change at a [moment’s notice] to suit the needs of the individual learners.”

At first, the teachers were silent when they were told that they wouldn’t have individual classrooms or desks, but they quickly started to embrace the building, Derry said.

The new 280,000-square-foot facility was designed to accommodate these new learning models; however, the school also needed to transfer from its previous northwest Houston facility because it was experiencing flooding, according to Van Martin, chairman and CEO of Tribble & Stephens Construction Ltd., the locally based general contractor on the project. The Indianapolis office of Fanning Howey served as architect of record through a joint venture with locally based House+Partners Architecture. Construction began in January 2015.

Completed in time for the 2016-17 school year, the facility serves as the North American flagship campus for Hong Kong-based Nord Anglia Education. It is an international school, particularly popular among expats living in Houston who are looking for the continuity of a British curriculum for their children.

More than 50 nationalities attend the school, with a majority of students being British, but students don’t have to be expats to attend. In fact, the school’s reputation is so strong that it’s considered a premiere private school in the Houston area, according to Dan Mader, AIA, ALEP, and principal at Fanning Howey. Its popularity was another reason for the new school, which increased the school’s capacity from 850 at its previous location to 2,000.

The BISH curriculum brings engagement and a broad range of programs for students from the very start of Pre-K through 12th grade. “The Early Years program is fairly unique for schools of this kind,” Mader said. “It’s integrated as a continuum of their curriculum — not just as a means to take care of Pre-K kids.”

The school particularly emphasizes a project-based learning approach to teaching science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM). An ever-growing partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and The Juilliard School continue to redefine those methods of teaching and learning. Not only do teachers participate in workshops at MIT to get ideas for the curriculum, but students also get the opportunity to visit MIT to immerse themselves in a culture of hands-on problem-solving. Similarly, the school’s music program is curated by Juilliard and is designed around 12 categories for students to explore a wide variety of musical genres, styles and cultures.

Designing for the Curriculum

The school’s British curriculum — which relates more to a holistic view of the student, rather than a compartmentalized one — played a major role in the design, addressing two major themes: personalized learning and transparency.

“The main goal of the project was to design and build a genuine ‘school of the future,’” said Derry.

The entire facility is centralized around a four-story atrium that includes a second-floor university-level research commons called the Agora, surrounded by 16 flexible academic neighborhoods. From there, teachers are assigned to a neighborhood, and in that neighborhood, there are a variety of different types of furniture and learning areas that can be customized to the needs of the students learning in that neighborhood.

The school features a wide variety of spaces for project-based learning. A two-story science center features laboratories and student-centered forums. There’s a Design Technology Center with CAD lab studios, 3D printers, print media and laser-printing studios as well as three MIT-influenced Makerspaces.

“We work closely with MIT on our Design Thinking curriculum,” said Derry. “This includes elements of entrepreneurial challenges, coming up with new ideas, failing, rethinking, pivoting, failing and failing again. This is probably the biggest thing we have learned — the importance of failure and pivoting.”

The “arts” portion of the STEAM curriculum doesn’t disappoint either. Designed in collaboration with The Juilliard School, BISH’s Performing Arts Center features a theater, black-box theater, choral rooms, a dance studio, and keyboard- and strings-instrument laboratories. There is also an Aquatics Center with learn-to-swim and competition pools as well as extensive outdoor sports fields, including FIFA-regulation soccer pitches and a varsity stadium.

And all of this project-based learning is also put on display due to the requirement that 50 percent of the walls in the facility be entirely made of glass. “There was always a desire for transparency so that, as you’re in the building, people can see education taking place, and students see their peers engaged in learning from a motivational standpoint,” said Mader. “That’s a pretty strong attribute for a building to have.”

There are also academic wings that feature what the school calls “learning communities” — each with a variety of breakout areas that act as project-based learning centers in each academic core, according to Mader. Hand-held devices and high-tech equipment also encourage learning to occur anywhere throughout the building.

“There was very much a focus on flexibility and future proofing, knowing that if the school wants to be cutting edge from a technology perspective, administrators have to acknowledge that changes [will occur],” Mader said. “You have to build that in from a concept standpoint so that it’s easy to update and that the backbone and technology foundation is strong enough for whatever changes they will make in the future.”

Derry said that the students had the biggest impact on the design. “We worked with various groups of students on many areas of the school. As an example, we set a capstone project for a group of juniors,” Derry said. “They worked for a week in the summer in the offices of the architects who designed the building. We then gave them a budget and let them design a major part of the outside garden and farm. Some of those student now have places to study architecture at the university level.”

To read the entire , check out the July/August issue of ĐÓ°ÉÔ­°æҕîl.

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For Knapp, the plan involves building a 67,822-square-foot, two-story elementary school on an open space adjacent to the existing facility. The $14 million project will include a separate gym and cafeterias, as well as space for community activities in collaboration with the United Way of Racine County. Bray Architects of Milwaukee was selected to design the new school in January.

When construction begins on Olympia Brown Elementary, the school’s original location will be vacated and the school will shift to a different area in Caledonia. The $15 million school will span approximately 67,415-square-foot and will likely focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum. Milwaukee-based Zimmerman Architectural Studios designed the facility.

The Gifford Elementary School addition, designed by Partners in Design of Kenosha, Wis., will be the largest of the three projects in terms of both size and total estimated cost. Gifford will require a $16.5 million budget with an extra $2.4 million to renovate the existing 85,000-square-foot elementary school. The middle school addition will comprise roughly 78,000 square feet, and the school, which will serve K-8 students upon completion, will remain open throughout construction.

The schools are anticipated to open in the fall of 2016 and will help improve educational offerings to district students. These projects will also create new community jobs.

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