When the city of Alexandria, Minnesota, asked community members what they wanted in their new high school to be like, they replied, "like the Google campus." So they hired John Pfluger of Cuningham Group Architecture to make that a reality. Something that might not be the same size, or even necessarily have the exact design considerations, but that represents the same sense of possibility—the feeling of being adaptable to the future, whatever might come of it. The result is a state-of-the-art facility for more than 1,400 students where the word "classroom" is verboten, and where an hour in algebra class might be indiscernible from kicking back in the quad.
The new $73 million Alexandria Area High School houses students from grades nine to 12. In terms of square footage, the new facility is average in size — about 200 square feet per student — but "it plays bigger than it is," says Pfluger, because of the layout. The new space is bright, open, social, and reconfigurable. It's made up of six smaller, acoustically separate environments, which connect through an open area called the Community Commons, a combination cafeteria, theater, and social space. Everything is open, right down to walls made out of glass, while all of the furniture is designed to be easy to move around and reconfigure.