A Compact Urban High School for Over-the-Rhine (Cincinnati, Ohio)

As constitutive components of the city, educational institutions appropriately take their place within urban neighborhoods. Built in such locations, school buildings and campuses should serve not only their immediate academic communities but also the broader communities of their surrounding neighborhoods. Schools comprise such a range of typologies and uses that they are effectively microcosms of the city itself, and the portions of urban schools devoted to civic functions should be made available and accessible for the benefit of the general public when not in use by students. The architecture of a new school in an urban setting should be compatible with the character of its context while adding to this character through the creative but sensitive application of local and regional building traditions. Compatibility of infill demands meticulous attention to the detail -- not just the massing, scale and materials -- of a neighborhood's character-defining architecture. An urban high school may be constructed as a multi-building campus rather than a single building in order to accommodate the full program while respecting established patterns of urban form.