Located in Taunton, MA, the school will serve 1,434 students in grades 9 through 12 and provide state-of-the-art facilities when it opens in 2026. Each of the school’s 19 career technical programs is designed to provide students with the skills and knowledge needed for a range of career paths. Cutting-edge shops and labs are organized into program-based career clusters, providing a dynamic learning environment that models real life work settings. An expansive courtyard at the heart of the school is flanked by the student hub, which includes an auditorium, cafeteria, and media center and promotes community and collaboration.

The new school embodies Bristol-Plymouth’s mission, clearly communicating its purpose to students, faculty, and visitors. Public-facing programs such as Culinary Arts, Cosmetology, Graphic Design, and Early Childhood Education are strategically located along the south-facing façade. Complemented by adjacent visitor parking, clear signage, and bold graphics, the visibility of these programs promotes these services to the greater community.

One of the primary ways tunable lighting promotes health is by supporting the synchronization of circadian rhythms. Light can be adjusted throughout the day to help regulate sleep-wake cycles, stimulating alertness during learning hours and fostering better sleep quality at night. These factors may contribute to improved concentration, mood stability, and overall well-being among students and teachers.

Tunable lighting allows educators to customize classroom ambiance according to specific activities and learning needs. For example, cooler tones may be chosen to promote focus and productivity while warmer tones set the stage for relaxed and creative pursuits. In addition to supporting diverse learning styles, this adaptability has been shown to enhance student engagement and academic performance.

This new school for 1,755 students includes a total of 25 rooms that incorporate tunable lighting technology. Arlington’s extensive adoption plan for this new technology will offer HMFH the potential for broad and deep post-occupancy evaluation.

Bristol-Plymouth is currently under construction and scheduled to open in 2026. The school prioritizes health and well-being through multiple initiatives including a healthy material pilot program as well as the implementation of tunable lighting in special education spaces.

Directly above the central spine is the school’s two-story media center, envisioned as a hub for research and study. Here, students can engage in individual or group project work in a range of seating options, utilize technology resources, attend class in a closed-off conference room, or find a private nook for reading.

Lightwells penetrate the media center, creating countertop workspaces similar to those in the humanities and STEAM wings. The lightwells, along with skylights and expansive windows, ensure the media center is a bright, lively, and welcoming space for students and faculty alike.

Scheduled to open in early 2025, Phase Three will include a new athletics wing and black box theater. Follow along on the AHS building project website for frequent construction updates.

Educational programming and energy-efficient engineering go hand in hand at the new Arlington High School, where HMFH led an extensive coordination and collaboration process between school officials, engineers and community members to achieve an efficient and comfortable learning environment. As everyday beneficiaries of well-designed spaces, occupants often take for granted the many building systems working together seamlessly to ensure comfort, health and wellbeing. The new all-electric Arlington High School will demonstrate this concept when its first phase opens in February of 2022.

An extensive educational program, complex phased construction schedule, and polluted soils on site that prohibited the use of geothermal wells, required the design team to think critically and creatively to produce a facility in line with Arlington’s ambitious sustainability goals. The solution balances the use of Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) systems–which supply space heating and cooling throughout the school without relying on fossil-fuels–with a carefully zoned educational plan that limits the hours of operation for these units, reducing the 408,000 sf school’s energy use to an impressive pEUI of 24.7.

The team’s proactive approach to sustainable design involved close collaboration with school administration and faculty early in the design process to identify the optimal configuration of educational program and building systems zoning layout. Grouping programs with similar operational schedules allows entire zones of mechanical systems to be turned off when the spaces are not occupied, limiting excess energy use in the school and contributing to saving 33% in energy costs over baseline.

When the facility is complete in 2024, the new high school will be the largest public building in Arlington and represent a shift in the Town toward a more climate conscious, resilient future.

JQUS serves an urban and predominantly minority student population for whom access to natural light, fresh air, and connections to nature are critical to their health and wellness. The new rooftop is an urban oasis with open space and gardens, where ample plantings filter pollutants for optimal air quality. To ensure that the entire school is isolated from the ambient ground-level air pollution in this transit-oriented location, fresh air ventilation is captured and distributed from roof level to interior spaces on floors below.

To prioritize mental health through design, a mindfulness garden provides a calm, contemplative space complete with meadow grasses, meandering stone paths, and intermittent benches. Here, urban students have a safe, relaxing, and peaceful place to unwind in a natural setting.

Beyond programmatic benefits, the JQUS green roof significantly improves the building’s environmental sustainability.

The planting system absorbs precipitation to slow stormwater runoff and lowers both the rooftop and surrounding air temperature to mitigate heat island effect and reduce the building’s cooling loads (as well as associated costs). JQUS’s rooftop contains a blend of native plant species, promoting biodiversity in its urban environment.

The new Chapman Middle School serves 1,470 students in grades six through eight with state-of-the-art learning and gathering spaces. As the largest middle school in Massachusetts, student well-being was a focal point of the design and drove many of the project’s sustainability goals, from fostering a sense of belonging for all students to encouraging a healthy lifestyle.

With Bristol Aggie’s unique curriculum rooted in science, environmental, and agriculture-based education, the new Center for Science and the Environment (CSE) is a living-learning lab that promotes hands-on research and experiential learning. Close ties between the school and the landscape led to sustainability goals focused on water conservation, which now reduce indoor water use in the CSE by 68%.

The renovation and addition to Bristol Aggie’s primary academic building, Gilbert Hall, showcases the environmental benefits of reusing existing buildings. The 1935 structure was redesigned to accommodate modern learning environments, maintain the building’s original character, and save on embodied carbon compared to new construction.

While renewing and expanding the Bristol County Agricultural High School campus, HMFH had the unique opportunity to design two buildings with comparable program and scale. Using Tally, a Revit plugin that quantifies the environmental impact of building materials ₂, we conducted a life cycle assessment analyzing the products specified in both the renovation of Gilbert Hall, a 72,000 SF academic building from 1935, and the new Center for Science and the Environment (CSE), a 73,500 SF academic building, to weigh the benefits of renovations vs. new construction.

A life cycle assessment (LCA) is an analysis of a project’s impact throughout its lifespan, from the gathering and transportation of raw materials, to reuse after a building’s end of life. A completed LCA evaluates factors including global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, smog formation, ozone depletion, and depletion of nonrenewable energy sources. In North America, there is currently not enough data to include site or mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems in a LCA despite their significant impact on a building’s sustainability. Therefore, our analysis of Gilbert Hall and the CSE focuses on the environmental impact of building materials.

CSE: 353.3 kg CO2eq/m²
GH: 259.41 kg CO2eq/m²

The newly constructed CSE features a highly efficient exterior wall design, while Gilbert Hall excels in its minimal impact by reusing the existing structural elements.

Standards for material transparency do exist, and a primary goal of HMFH’s research for Bristol-Plymouth is to identify and specify materials that are proven to be safe by fully disclosing ingredient and manufacturing information through Declare. Declare is a platform for manufacturers to provide essential information on the material makeup of their products and compliance with standards such as the Living Building Challenge (LBC) Red List and LBC Watch List, which outline materials, chemicals, and elements harmful to human health and the environment.³

Drawing from over 50 years of experience designing K-12 public schools, HMFH is researching and vetting hundreds of materials to develop a baseline list of products that contribute to a healthy learning environment and are optimized for K-12 architecture. The intent of this research is twofold: first, to provide a list of healthy building materials to serve as a reference point for future projects, and second, to push manufacturers to disclose the chemical makeup of their materials and ultimately eliminate chemicals of concern present in these products.

Three 30,000-gallon underground cisterns collect water for reuse while rain gardens throughout the school’s parking lots filter stormwater runoff from the site and mitigate heat island effects. Together with the use of low-flow fixtures, these measures reduce the building’s annual water consumption by 45 percent.

Located less than 300 feet from a busy six-lane highway, the new facility responds to the challenge of providing optimal air quality with rooftop mechanical air handling units positioned with their intakes facing away from the highway and prevailing winds. This enables displacement ventilation systems to distribute clean air throughout the interior, bringing 20 percent more fresh air into the spaces at low velocity without the typical costs and acoustical distractions associated with conventional mechanical systems.

The new school represents a transformation of Saugus Public Schools to reflect the town’s vision for innovative, equitable facilities. Creating a welcoming, accessible and inclusive environment for all was critical to the success of the design. All-gender toilet facilities are conveniently located and used by faculty and students alike. Special education spaces feature tunable LED fixtures, giving teachers flexibility to adjust light intensity and color temperature to help modulate behavior and respond to light sensitivity. A special classroom on the third floor provides a designated space for medically fragile community members with exceptional views and access to a rooftop classroom.