Award of Merit - K-12

Sound School

A 300-ft.-long dock, a 425-ft. boardwalk and pier, and an all-tide boat launch are part of the everyday school experience for the 320 high school students attending the Sound School Regional Vocational Aquaculture Center in New Haven, Conn.

A 3,000-gallon brine tank, fish production floor, and "vintage" laboratory - a former floating machine shop now upgraded and adapted to accommodate the school's curriculum - are part of the experience, too.

The public school serving 15 area communities certainly doesn't fit the model for secondary educational facilities. Its specialized curriculum has an emphasis on marine science, technology, repair, and navigation.

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Nothing about the campus - constructed at an abandoned 1930s wastewater treatment facility located on New Haven Harbor - is of the cookie-cutter variety, either. The parcel is surrounded by a steel cofferdam that juts out into New Haven Harbor. Part of the project involved reinforcing the cofferdam with new sheet piles.

The unique facility wasn't easy to renovate. The project team originally took on renovation of the four wood-framed buildings totaling 26,000 sq. ft. of space, which had housed all the school's classroom, laboratory, and shop facilities. In addition, the project team also had to repair, reinforce, expand, or install marine and site facilities aimed to benefit the education program.

"I can think of no other building where the educational vision has so clearly dictated the architectural outcomes," said Steven Pynn, principal of the school since 1998. "It's a tribute to the design team and their willingness to take risks."

The designers reused the foundation of the plant's administration building, reinforcing 857 piles, while using lightweight concrete to backfill the original noncontaminated storage tanks.

The initial choice for expanding facility capacity was conversion of the old plant administration building. That idea died when inspectors discovered polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) had leached into the bricks and mortar of the building, rendering it unsafe. Instead, the project team demolished the building and removed the PCB contaminated material at a cost of $1.3 million.

While the building wasn't salvageable, the holding tanks and foundations were. The new 40,000-sq.-ft. aquaculture building, which serves as the focal point of the school, sits on the old supports which the team shored up to handle the new loads. Work on the school, which came in on budget at a price tag of $24 million, was completed in the summer in time for the beginning of the school year.

The classrooms, shops, and laboratories aim to replicate what students would find in modern industry settings. That translated into complex mechanical and technical requirements to create creating the systems to support the fish production, seafood technology, nautical science, meteorology, and ship building programs.

To accommodate the fish production laboratory, the team had to build a pumping system that draws in water from New Haven's drinking supply for freshwater fish and from Long Island Sound for saltwater fish. The system treats the water in a processing area and passes it through a series of heat exchangers to regulate temperature.

To protect the program in the case of an environmental emergency, the team also built a 25,000-gallon storage tank. The system allows for regulating the water inside for various fish species. It can also create "synthetic seawater" using potable water and a saline mixture.

While programmatic elements for the school were paramount, the project team also knew that the waterfront project had a community purpose. Highly visible from the harbor, the campus needed to have attractive buildings that added to the neighborhood without decreasing visual and physical access to the harbor.

That also met the criteria of George Foote, the school's founder, former principal, and consultant who helped coordinate the building program. "It's bringing suburban kids into the city for their education, and it's been a catalyst for restoration projects all along the harbor," he said.