Outdoor classrooms and active farmlands surround the extension to this ecological high school in Connecticut, which Gray Organschi built with cross-laminated timber to demonstrate sustainable design practices.

Common Ground High School is a charter school in New Haven with a curriculum focused on the environment. It was founded in 1997 and is one of the first schools in the US to offer a high school programme dedicated to sustainability and organic farming.

Its campus sits near West Rock Ridge State Park, on a verdant site near Yale University. The school tapped local architecture firm Gray Organschi to create an addition to house various activities, such as a new gymnasium, laboratories, communal areas and classrooms.

"The project brief challenged the design team to weave the new building and its exterior spaces into the fabric of farm buildings, agricultural fields, upland forests, and wetland habitat that lie at the city's edge and serve as the school's working landscape and outdoor classroom," said a statement from Gray Organschi.
The 14,760-square-foot (1,371-square-metre) building is elevated above the ground and features wood-clad walls that form an irregularly shaped rooftop. The extension doubles the school's footprint.

The project is one of the first buildings in the country to use cross-laminated timber (CLT) ?  an engineered wood consisting of laminated timber sections ? for its main structure, according to the architects.
Consisting of layers of...