These goals allowed the design team the opportunity to explore Needville architectural character from Main Street to the rural countryside and to study, document and photograph the different elements that make up its community. In this exploration, the design team noted in the structures the emphasis on function over aesthetics that is prevalent in rural life. From this came the inspiration of Needville High School’s design – a machine aesthetic with an agrarian theme.

At the facility’s heart is a central student gathering space designed as a silo feature and flanked by two academic wings housing the small learning communities. These communitites are organized around a courtyard that frames the view to the science building – a distinctive campus feature with exhaust hoods and a green screen in the form of latticework and vines on the west façade. Transparency is carried throughout the facility’s interior spaces, with ample glass framing the landscape and serving to acknowledge the land’s integral role within the community. Other agrarian-themed features:

• a field wall of stacked stones in the library
• corrugated metal panels on the curved auditorium walls that along with natural light, frame the auditorium stage
• exposed steel trusses in the gymnasium, which is flooded with natural light and features a glass encased weight room on the second floor overlooking the basketball courts
• a cupola and exposed trusses in the dining room reminiscent of a pavilion