Mountainside High School

Beaverton’s 334,000sf Mountainside High School is the largest comprehensive high school in Oregon, serving 2200 students with advanced features for career and technology classes, state-of-the-art arts and athletic facilities, and features to enhance collaboration among students and teachers. Built on a fast-track schedule with multiple bid packages, this ambitious project included a black-box theater, band room, aerobics/dance room, a wood shop, two culinary classrooms, a 2000-person stadium, synthetic turf baseball, football, and soccer fields, and a main entry plaza. KPFF provided structural engineering services as well as design coordination for the stadium and design for the stadium restrooms, concessions, and elevator buildings.

Because the fast-track schedule required a highly collaborative team effort, the Beaverton School District used team-building activities to facilitate a cohesion among the design team, the contractor, and themselves. During construction of the project, the benefits of the team-building method became clear as the team worked together to successfully navigate conflict resolutions.

The project presented several environmental and topological challenges, including the necessity for wetland remediation. Much of the land would be occupied by multiple athletic fields, constraining the building’s footprint and resulting in a compact school with a central courtyard that houses multiple outdoor classrooms. The design team took advantage of existing site topography, surrounding the central courtyard with cascading stormwater treatment facilities, which, along with the ballasted solar panel system, puts sustainable practices on display. The building can also serve as a community emergency shelter for natural disasters, having been designed as a Risk Category IV structure to withstand a high-magnitude earthquake.