• Working early in his career with redevelopment agencies in Boston and Southern California and on high schools for impoverished villages in Southern Italy, Blurock realized that designing inner-city schools would combine his dual interests in urban planning and education architecture.


• Blurock’s leadership in California school facility design is rooted in his belief that new schools can help reclaim dying urban centers — and that savvy economic leverage is the most effective way to foster good urban architecture. For urban school districts with high land costs, scarce open land, and burgeoning immigrant populations, he has pioneered two major strategies:


• Creative use of small land parcels to maximize usable space; and the “hermit-crab” concept — taking advantage of structures abandoned by other entities as a result of changing demographics and economic downturns.


• Blurock’s practice builds on recent state legislation that provides supplemental funding for increased site density and offers incentives for schools built on top of pre-existing buildings. In his view, designing schools for “unbuildable” sites or unusual locations means gaining a new freedom to reinvent the form — and to develop prototypes for new California State Department of Education guidelines that mandate a project-oriented and interdisciplinary approach to learning.


• Utilizing a vacated downtown school administration building for Long Beach Elementary School saved $5 million in land costs and funded a creative solution for the too-small site. By elevating the playing field on a deck above lower-division classrooms, Blurock nearly doubled the usable space. A 24-foot-high corrugated metal screen designed by Thom Mayne wraps around the playing field, shielding the playing children yet allowing their silhouettes to be seen by passersby, thus reinforcing a sense of community.


• Low land values in a deserted urban area made possible a low-cost school in a poorly performing mall, purchased for less than half the cost of condemned property. Pomona Educational Village was designed to occupy a 100,000-square-foot former super store, for 25 percent less than the cost of new construction.


• Thomas Blurock turns the negative aspects of urban centers — poverty, high density, expensive real estate — into creative opportunities. His firm revitalizes neighborhoods with sensitively designed schools that embody forward-looking educational principles and a powerful vision of the future of America’s cities.

Blurock capability brochure
excerpt

Schools in crisis . . . a problem we understand.
It’s no secret that urban American school districts are in crisis. The school-age population is rapidly increasing, yet school districts — saddled with aging facilities that don’t meet today’s education guidelines — are faced with chronic under-funding and scarce affordable land for new construction.

So it’s no wonder that today’s watchwords are: “Build them fast and cheap.” But a quick fix is no substitute for a long-term solution.

We offer long-term solutions grounded in political and economic realities.
At Thomas Blurock Architects, we have a 15-year history of bringing projects in on time and on budget. But that’s just the beginning. Our smart, innovative approach to school funding, siting, and design is driven by a thorough understanding of land economics, state politics, and the new curriculum guidelines.

Our strong presence in Sacramento has given us an expert grasp of school-related issues and a keen feel for successful funding strategies. Our political savvy and proven integrity have expedited the approval process at the Office of the State Architect. We even helped the California State Office of Public School Construction write and interpret the groundbreaking “Second to None” guidelines.

While other architects focus narrowly on design issues, we focus on the big picture. To avoid costly mistakes, we get involved in the earliest stages of the planning process. We know that if a design doesn’t work economically, it doesn’t work.

Creative strategies meet even “impossible” problems head-on. We view urban schools as a means of helping to ensure the healthy future of our cities. We’ve put our sensible, hard-working ideas into practice throughout Southern California, devising siting and funding strategies and design prototypes that promote a pupil-centered, community-based approach to education.

Solving the dilemma of too-small parcels. A 1,200-student school on a 2.5-acre site? Canny strategizing paid off at Long Beach International Elementary School. We rose to the challenge — by putting the playing field on the roof. Lowering the ground floor by four feet created usable first-floor space for K-2 grades. Extra funding came from the $5 million in land costs saved by locating the school in a vacated downtown school district administrative building.

Creatively utilizing new spaces. Recognizing that schools represent the greatest consolidation of open space in a community, we have turned underutilized commercial property into viable learning centers. By purchasing an economically distressed mall on 25 acres for $5.5 million — nearly half the cost of condemned property — the Pomona School District transformed an old discount store into a 1,800-student elementary school for about one-quarter of the cost of new construction.

Classrooms are divided into manageable 400-500-student clusters, and extra space accommodates support services (including child care, adult education, and teacher training). Another bonus: the resulting boost in the mall’s retail sales created additional income for the district.

Reducing size problems. Today’s huge schools are pressure-cooker environments that create learning and security problems. Instead, we design 300-to-500-student classroom clusters that foster a greater sense of personal attention and responsibility. Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona — a prototype for the state’s “Second to None” guidelines — features a central courtyard surrounded by a four-classroom “bar” configuration for the lower division and loft-like upper division classrooms.

Creating functional designs for two-story configurations. Supplemental funding for increased site density means rethinking traditional school design to accommodate additional stories. At Martin Luther King Elementary School in Santa Ana, a two-story plan built around a courtyard provides added security and a sense of community on a five-acre site, roughly half the state standard for a school of this type.

Remaking the portable classroom. We spent only 90 days on a revolutionary redesign of OPSC-mandated portable high school classrooms — as flexible, modular spaces that promote team-teaching and participatory learning. These high-quality portables will become an integral part of 3,400-student Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo High School in Long Beach. Innovative land use also plays a big role in this project. The school will be sited on 56 park-like acres of an abandoned U.S. Navy housing project.

Approaching master-planning from a neighborhood-conscious angle. Centrally located Santa High School was an aging, ineptly modernized facility. Overcrowded and isolated in a sprawling low-income area, it was long overdue for a 50,000-square-foot expansion and modernization. By taking advantage of the Roos Law, we master-planned the campus to achieve greater site density and more open space. As a result, the school is well-positioned to forge strong new links with surrounding neighborhoods and the city center.