Tucson, Arizona

Consisting of teaching space for physics, biology and chemistry that uniquely blend classrooms with laboratories, this facility for The Gregory College Preparatory School looks at new ways of using the building as a pedagogical tool. Rather than filling the complete building site to raise it above high water in its floodplain location, as is traditional in this area, the building responds to its place by only elevating the structure itself, preserving the surrounding land and trees and accepting the reality that the periodic flooding which will occur is part of a natural and necessary ecological cycle.