Design Detail: Reclaimed Concrete Benches for NCSD’s New Urban High School
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students surround recycled concrete bench at new urban high school
North Clackamas School District’s magnet school, New Urban High School, was built in 1924. Thanks to a 2016 bond Clackamas County voters approved, New Urban High School (NUHS) will soon receive long-awaited renovations—a complete remodel, seismic upgrades, fire safety and technology improvements, and many others. Opsis Architecture is leading the design team on the project and GreenWorks is excited to be doing the site design, which includes two courtyards, benches, surrounding landscaping, and stormwater management. GreenWorks Landscape Designer Nadja Quiroz explained more:
“NUHS is the kind of high school every teenager deserves to attend. The magnet school has made it their mission to provide students with a safe, inclusive, and empowering learning environment that actively bridges education with the “real world” through service-based projects. Adherence to this mission was obvious the moment we stepped foot onto the campus: colorful, student-made banners emblazoned with inclusive affirmations alongside native bee habitat installations lined the walkway to the school’s large garden.
We immediately felt compelled to embody this conscientious spirit in NUHS’s new outdoor commons. Aside from literally bringing stormwater to the forefront of the campus, a move that celebrates our Pacific Northwest climate while clearly delineating between the public street and the campus’s core, we decided to incorporate some of the old building into the new landscape. Having successfully integrated salvaged concrete into past retrofit projects, we thought the gritty-yet-polished aesthetic was the perfect opportunity to reduce our concrete demand while complementing the student body’s artsy aesthetic.
Thus, a quirky, asymmetrical “boomerang” bench concept emerged and became the backbone for the site’s design, inspiring non-square angles throughout the campus’s landscape. Since the benches will be made of segmented concrete stacks, we disassembled and re-combined the segments into smaller benches that will fit within the school’s more intimate, technology lab courtyard.”
Improvements to New Urban High School are in the design phase and construction is expected to begin in April 2020. Read more about the project here and here.