SPACE CRAFT Innovative architecture is bringing form to the function of 21st-century learning

In her first visit with the design team for the new high school she would be presiding over, Principal Tabitha Branum was blunt about what needed to be done. "When I met with them for the first time," she says, "I said, 'You tell me where I can knock down any and all walls. You tell me what's not load bearing, because I'm gonna knock those walls down.'"

The mission was to transform what had been a traditional elementary school site into an academy-style high school, replicating a newfangled school architectural model that enables 21st-century skills to thrive. Studio-style open spaces that recall the aesthetics of a corporate loft would replace the right angles and enclosed environment of the brick-and-mortar classroom. "The entire infrastructure of what was inside the four walls had to go," Branum says. "We had to be willing to let go of any existing room-- size, dimensions, everything."