Edison Preparatory School serves students from 6th through 12th grade, and was ranked by Newsweek as being in the top 500 high schools in the nation. Since opening in 1954, Edison has been located on a forty-four acre campus in “mid-town” Tulsa and is part of Tulsa Public Schools (TPS)–the second largest school district in the state of Oklahoma. As part of a choice-based school district Edison prides itself on offering a challenging, college-preparatory curriculum for its diverse student body and found itself needing a Collegiate Center to better serve the needs of students and draw prospective students into the district.

The design for a new Collegiate Center addition to Edison Preparatory school posed the challenge of creating a building that is safe, transparent and accessible in an incredibly programmatically dense space. In this case, “safe” needed to include two new FEMA-361, ICC-500-rated safe rooms in order to provide the greatest level of extreme weather protection for occupants of the Collegiate Center. Oklahoma is well known for its location in “Tornado Alley” and schools throughout the state are looking to improve protection and shelter for students and faculty.

“Transparent” and “accessible,” in terms of this project, go beyond typical design needs since the addition is placed in front of an existing school with a single, secure entrance. The Structure itself is the wayfinding device for the new entrance.

In the aftermath of the Moore and Joplin tornadoes, Tulsa Public Schools decide that they wanted to invest  in FEMA rated Safe Rooms for their students and develop a protype for the entire school system.

 Having just returned from COP18 in Doha, Casper saw this as an opportunity to implement EE and Resiliency technology and protocols into the design of the new Collegiate Center.