Farmington’s new 405,000-sq-ft school is the 10th high school to be built within the state’s third-largest district. It can accommodate 2,000 students and is now the largest net-zero-energy building in Utah.

It looks less like a traditional high school and more like a college campus. The bright blue and yellow building sets itself apart from the residential landscape, with a facade that has more window spaces than brick. Inside, the building’s sweeping main hallway is illuminated with sunlight and columns that can change colors. The layout allows students to share their ideas with peers in small spaces or large ones, around coffee tables and couches, in stairways or classrooms where whiteboards are built into the desks. Extra charging stations for high-tech devices are scattered throughout the building.

The school features multiple-size classrooms, or “learning suites,”—600 sq ft, 950 sq ft and 1,400 sq ft—surrounding central collaboration areas. Teachers within the suites can work together on project-based learning assignments.

The project team developed the most effective design at the lowest cost per square foot by first balancing the costs of systems with expected energy savings over their life cycle. Nearly all the power required to operate the building is supplied by three large photovoltaic canopies on the district’s new bus facility next door. LED lighting, ground-source heat pumps, evaporative cooling and an efficient building envelope support sustainability goals for the facility.

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