The Upper School building is designed to enhance and deepen connections between students and their peers, between students and their teachers, between seemingly disparate academic subjects, between SAAS and the Seattle community, and between Seattle and the world.

  • Community Spaces

    Two-story Upper School Community Commons and additional collaborative spaces on each academic floor designed allow for independent or group study and gathering.

  • Outdoor Courtyard

    This unique space connects to the main Upper School Community Commons through accordion glass doors that can create an indoor-outdoor gathering space.

  • Entrepreneurship & Design Center

    Creativity will spark in the wood and metal fabrication shops, as well as prototyping and collaboration spaces, and an outdoor courtyard for welding and hot work.

  • Music Production Studios

    Designated classrooms and control rooms for mixing, editing and vocal recording.

  • Flexible Classroom Spaces

    Both large seminar spaces and classrooms accommodating 24 and 40 students will house core Upper School academic classes.

In particular, this project will give our Innovations Program the dedicated space that it needs to continue to thrive. The World Economic Forum lists the most important skill categories that young people will need to succeed in the workforce in 2025 as problem-solving, self-management, working with people, and technology use and development. The Innovations program, which is part of the core curriculum at SAAS, addresses the development of these skills in our students. At SAAS, classes in the Innovations Program fall into one of the following categories: Computational Thinking, Entrepreneurship and Design, Financial Literacy, and finally, Senior Projects, which allow students to take all the skills they have learned and apply them in current real world work-settings during the end of the Senior year.

Sustainability Features

  • Natural Ventilation

    • In classrooms and student commons spaces

  • Optimized Daylighting

  • Rooftop Solar Arrays

  • Stormwater Retention

  • Vegetated Roof

  • Native/drought-Resistant Plantings

  • Reduced Carbon Footprint

    • Fossil fuel free operations

    • Electric kitchen

    • Reduced embodied carbon materials

    • Electric car charging stations

We envision a campus and new Upper School building will reflect our value in community and our commitment to the evolution of education - always with the goal of preparing our students to be civic, contributing members of society as a whole. This is the home that we need to ensure that SAAS remains dynamic and cohesive for the next generation of Seattle.

Want to see more?

Thanks to our partners at LMN Architects, we invite you to view a full fly through animation experience of the future Home of the Upper School.