A new charter school has broken ground in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood. Operated by Bright Star Schools and designed by L.A. firm Berliner Architects, Rise Kohyang High School (RKHS) will serve about 600 students in grades 9 to 12 and is slated to open in the fall of 2023.
With almost 88,000 square feet, the $40 million high school is an L-shaped, three-story building with a central courtyard. The outdoor space can be accessed via the ground-level multipurpose room/lunch area and school offices. On opposite ends of the building, two stairways lead to the second floor, providing access to 24 classrooms on two levels, a library/media room, and additional staff areas. Offices are placed on all three floors to provide student supervision and facilitate collaboration among administrative staff and teachers. A second-floor balcony overlooks the courtyard.
Around the campus perimeter, fencing both creates a secure enclosure and gives students a visual connection to the outside. The fence also features the school’s name in a mix of English and Korean, a nod to the school’s community.
“Space is sparse and expensive in Los Angeles,” Richard Berliner, principal of Berliner Architects, said in a statement. “Our primary challenge was accommodating RKHS students, faculty, and staff while programming an outdoor space on an extraordinarily small, 1.2-acre site. We designed the courtyard to act as the school’s main entryway and took advantage of the naturally sloping campus topography to integrate a partially subterranean ground level for parking and student drop-off.”
The project meets design guidelines from the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) for reduced energy consumption and increased sustainability. Green features promote water conservation, energy efficiency, greenhouse-gas emission reduction, and indoor environmental quality. Skylights, louvered sun blades, and roller-type window shades balance natural light and solar heat gain.
Berliner Architects is also designing the $35 million Rise Kohyang Middle School, located about two miles from RKHS.
Building Team:
Owner and/or developer: Bright Star Schools
Design architect: Berliner Architects
Architect of record: Berliner Architects
MEP engineer: Budlong and Associates
Structural engineer: Saiful Bouquet Structural Engineers
General contractor/construction manager: Bernards
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Las Vegas high school focuses on careers in justice, emergency response
McCarthy Building Cos., St. Louis, recently completed construction on the 130,700-sf Veterans Tribute Career & Technical Academy, a Las Vegas high school that focuses on service career pathways in 911 dispatch training, law enforcement, crime scene analysis, emergency medical training, and computer forensics.
| Aug 11, 2010
Three Schools checking into L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel site
Pasadena-based Gonzalez Goodale Architects is designing three new schools for Los Angeles Unified School District's Central Wilshire District. The $400 million campus, located on the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, will house a K-5 elementary school, a middle school, a high school, a shared recreation facility (including soccer field, 25-meter swimming pool, two gymnasiums), and a new publ...
| Aug 11, 2010
7 Keys to Unlocking Energy Efficiency in Schools
Today’s best K-12 schools are embracing the sustainability ethos in their design and construction, and that can mean a healthier, more comfortable indoor environment and improved learning. Some studies contend that ample amounts of daylighting, for example, lead to higher test scores. High-performance HVAC systems that constantly draw fresh air into a classroom seem to help both teachers ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Blue-Light Schoolhouses
Add the explosion in the number of school-aged kids nationally to the glut of huge, vacant stores in many communities and what do you get? Big boxes being turned into schools. For districts facing population pressure, these empty retail buildings can be the key to creating classrooms quickly, and at a significant cost advantage.
| Aug 11, 2010
Great Solutions: Green Building
27. Next-Generation Green Roofs Sprout up in New York New York is not particularly known for its green roofs, but two recent projects may put the Big Apple on the map. In spring 2010, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts will debut one of the nation's first fully walkable green roofs. Located across from the Juilliard School in Lincoln Center's North Plaza, Illumination Lawn will consist ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Dream Fields, Lone Star Style
How important are athletic programs to U.S. school districts? Here's one leading indicator: In 2005, the National Football League sold 17 million tickets. That same year, America's high schools sold an estimated 225 million tickets to football games, according to the American Football Coaches Association.
| Aug 11, 2010
Back to Nature: Can wood construction create healthier, more productive learning environments?
Can the use of wood in school construction create healthier, safer, more productive learning environments? In Japan, there's an ongoing effort by government officials to construct school buildings with wood materials and finishes—everything from floors and ceilings to furniture and structural elements—in the belief that wood environments have a positive impact on students.
| Aug 11, 2010
High School in a Hurry
One of the more compelling arguments for charter schools is their theoretical ability to streamline decision making. Eliminate all those layers of bureaucratic fat that clog the arteries of most public school systems, the argument goes, and decisions can be made to flow much more smoothly, even when it comes to designing and building a major school project.
| Aug 11, 2010
Bronze Award: Garfield High School, Seattle, Wash.
Renovations to Seattle's historic Garfield High School focused mainly on restoring the 85-year-old building's faded beauty and creating a more usable and modern interior. The 243,000-sf school (whose alumni include the impresario Quincy Jones) was so functionally inadequate that officials briefly considered razing it.
| Aug 11, 2010
Managing the K-12 Portfolio
In 1995, the city of New Haven, Conn., launched a program to build five new schools and renovate and upgrade seven others. At the time, city officials could not have envisioned their program morphing into a 17-year, 44-school, $1.5 billion project to completely overhaul its entire portfolio of K-12 facilities for nearly 23,000 students.
