Fox Lane High School

Bedford, New York

Firm

Geddis Architects

Client

Bedford Central School District

Area

236,200 sq.ft.

Total Cost

$42,800,000

Completion Date

09/2008

Fox Lane High School was created in 1956 as a multi-town, innovative enterprise on a 50-acre rocky hilltop. Over five decades, its many wings of combined middle and high school, science and art evolved into a 1,500-student high school where the many “wings” needed a thorough second look.

The amalgam of administrative, middle school, high school and fields offered poor vehicular access, and the space provided inadequate separation of recreation, pedestrians, buses and cars.

The high school was reconceived, re-utilizing 145,000 square feet and building 81,200 square feet around a new north-south axis with clerestory light with two entrances; a commons; reconstructed science, renovated music and art, and 35 new general-use, properly sized high school classrooms; three computer rooms; a new electronic music room; a new orchestra room; and a new technical drawing studio. Solar orientation and sun shading were fundamental to the design inside and out. Expanding a small, pre-existing commons and making it a pivot point was part of the plan.

The result is a forward-looking, coherent and striking three-story general classroom hub around a south-facing atrium linking all spaces to a one-story, sloped metal roofed north interior, along a skylighted street. With the majority of the undersized one-story concrete block classroom wings of the 1956 footprint demolished, all teaching spaces now have ample space, natural light and technology. The revised hilltop plateau has a new second front door onto the adjacent roadway.