Treasure Coast High School

Port St. Lucie, Florida
St. Lucie County Public Schools

• 336,198 sq. ft.
• Associated Architect: Schenkel Shultz Architecture
• First Place Winner: Florida Educational Facilities Planners’ Association
• Citation of Excellence, Learning by Design

This exuberant facility with its exaggerated arts and crafts influenced façade is the optimum application of the “small scale learning community” concept.  The architecture and interiors for the overall facility relate to each other and unify the campus, but are designed to scale down through patterns and details, creating intimate learning environments within the whole.

Four main academic buildings (housing 600 students each) decentralize to eight small 300 student unit learning communities gathered around a central courtyard.  Each community focus contains its own atrium and benefits from enhanced day lighting, indoor air quality and audio systems.  The interior designers utilized materials, patterns, and color to create individual identities for the learning communities and to integrate the entire facility from the exterior in, and employed sensitivity to scale and details to create intimacy and enhance learning activities within each center.

Photo Credit:  Chris Casler Photography