New Construction for Growing Mountain View Student Population

Mountain View High School and Los Altos High School celebrated the start of construction of new classroom buildings with a groundbreaking ceremony. The new construction, funded by a $295-million bond measure passed last year, will accommodate the California district’s rapidly growing student population. The buildings were designed by Quattrocchi Kwok Architects (QKA) and will be built by RGM Kramer Inc.

Mountain View High School

MVHS will add two new buildings totaling in 42,000 square-feet of new construction. The new two-story main classroom building will feature:

  • Four life-skills labs for Special Education students;
  • Expandable classrooms with movable walls;
  • Writable wall surfaces;
  • Small group break-out rooms; and a
  • Staff collaboration lounge.

A new single-story building will be for STEM classrooms including: two computer science classrooms, an engineering lab with 3D printing capabilities, a robotics lab and an electronics prototyping lab.

Los Altos High School

LAHS will gain a new auxiliary gymnasium and 23 new classrooms.

The general classroom building will include: a culinary arts classroom, several flexible learning spaces and a teacher collaboration room. A new lab building will include spaces for 3D printing, laser cutting, and an advanced computer lab.

Both campuses will pursue LEED-Silver certification and are designed to meet Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) standards.

About the Author

Yvonne Marquez is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Architectural Power for the Modern Campus Landscape

    For generations, an outdoor classroom only required a textbook and a patch of grass. Today, not only has the laptop replaced the printed pages, the rise of agile learning has turned campuses into study halls with students listening to lectures and researching topics from quads, gardens, and plazas. The challenge for architects and facility managers is to provide connectivity without cluttering the landscape with visual eyesores or creating safety hazards with extension cords.

  • Colorado School District Breaks Ground on Unified PK–12 Campus

    The Haxtun School District No. Re-2J in Haxtun, Colo., recently announced that ground has been broken on a renovation/addition project that will unite its two schools, Haxtun Elementary and Haxtun Jr/Sr High School, according to a news release.

  • Q&A: How to Prevent Kitchen Grease Fires in Commercial Kitchens

    School cafeterias and university dining halls serve thousands of meals daily, relying on high-heat equipment like fryers, grills, and ovens. While these operations keep students fed, they also generate significant grease-laden vapors. Without proper controls, this grease becomes a silent fire threat. As a certified exhaust cleaning specialist and business coach who has helped hundreds of institutional facilities achieve NFPA 96 compliance, I emphasize that proactive grease management isn’t optional; it’s a core fire/life safety practice.

  • Montclair State University Starts Construction on $120M STEM Building

    Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J., recently broke ground on a new $120-million Interdisciplinary Science Building, according to university news. The university partnered with HoK Architects for the project’s design, and it’s scheduled to open in time for the 2028–29 academic year.