Santa Fe Indian School

Narratives

Educator Narrative

The educator narrative will be submitted.

What exemplary ideas do the designs contain that enhance learning?

Included in narrative in following screen.

What innovations in the planning, programming and design process supported the realization of those exemplary ideas?

This school is both a modern learning institution and a Pueblo Village home for the school’s 700 students in grades 7-12, predominately from the Nineteen Northern New Mexico Pueblos. The school is focused on the dual mission of educating students for the challenges and opportunities of life outside the pueblo while preserving and strengthening the cultural and spiritual aspects of the learner’s Native American heritage.

The master planning, siting, and design of the school was informed by the pueblo connection to the land, the sun, and the seasons. Orientation of the site plan is on a north-south/east-west axis in order to benefit from passive solar energy and natural lighting and to emphasize and celebrate the Pueblo reverence for the spiritual nature of the cardinal directions. The master plan conforms to the site topography in order to minimize the scarring of the earth. The proportioning and the massing of the buildings reflects traditional, human scale, Pueblo structures with forms that emanate from the land.

The design of the school brings together Pueblo culture, architectural forms, traditional building materials, educational philosophy, and student needs across body, mind, and spirit. The buildings were designed to support learning within the context of Pueblo community values. The overall plan provides spaces for learning, living, recreation, and spiritual growth in an inviting, home-like environment that is safe, secure, and comfortable. Learning occurs in classrooms and throughout the environmental campus.

The campus is organized around the Student Life Plaza. Academic buildings and dormitories are strategically placed on the site and around the Plaza to form outdoor courtyards and to frame important views of sacred mountain peaks. The multi-story buildings are stepped back with building mass, exterior stairways, roof top gathering places, and punched windows that recall the Pueblo design idiom.

The new school was constructed in three phases. Classrooms, computer labs, and science labs were constructed in Phase I. Family style dormitories, and the Student Activities Center, prominently located on the main plaza, were completed in Phase II. Other Phase II facilities include additional classrooms, language labs, art rooms, library, bookstore, and various student recreational and athletic areas. The educational facilities are state-of-the-art for learning today and flexible for the future. A variety of play fields are located close to the gymnasium building and cross-country trails circle the entire campus. A 3,000-seat gymnasium/wellness complex was built in Phase III.

The design of the dormitory building was essential to the success of the school experience for the students who come from a tradition of very close family ties. The home Pueblos of the students are in sparsely populated areas unable to support education facilities for today’s world. Both families and students make significant sacrifices in order for the students to attend school in the city and it was important that the dormitory experience provide a family-like living experience for the learners. The dormitory consists of a girls and boys wing separated by a centralized living room, kitchen, and administrative area. The dormitory is designed in the Pueblo Revival style and the three-story, staggered configuration achieves the massing and stepping appropriate to the style and minimizes the building footprint on the site. A cultural learning space is within the dormitory.

Sustainable, cost efficient design elements include: central heating plant, energy efficient building envelope, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, natural lighting, appropriate acoustics, and native building materials that recall the adobe building tradition of the Pueblos.