Ojai Valley School formally dedicated three new signature buildings at its high school campus in August 2021. Check out the documentary film about the rebuild:
The $16.5 million project includes three new permanent buildings that form a village of pavilions that connect learning, studying, and student living. The single-story Aramont Science & Technology Center supports a growing science and technology curriculum with various classrooms and labs, as well as a maker space for advancing technology and a multipurpose room for the arts — all of which feature an integrated indoor-outdoor profile.
The two-story Littlefield Student Commons comprises a dining hall, library, and student center, creating a space used for special events, and with a second-story library with views over the Ojai Valley.
Grace Hobson Smith House Dorm, as seen from the Littlefield Student Commons.
The project also includes the rebuilt Grace Hobson Smith House dormitory for resident girls along with faculty apartments organized around its own central courtyard.
Los Angeles architect Frederick Fisher, whose firm developed a master plan for future growth at the school, designed the rebuild based on his understanding of the school’s character as well as its academic and co-curricular programs.
“OVS showed great resilience in transforming the tragedy of the Thomas Fire into a reimagination of the Upper Campus,” said Fisher. “We reset from our previous planning with the OVS community and seized this rare ‘blank canvas’ opportunity to create a functionally and aesthetically unified state-of-the-art learning, living, and gathering village interwoven with the extraordinary landscape.”
The site has also been extensively fireproofed through the incorporation of flat roofs without eaves, plaster (stucco) finishes, enhanced sprinklers and improved site access, all of which are in accordance with Ventura County’s strictest guidelines for defensible landscaping.
Together, the Upper Campus project is anticipated to achieve LEED status through a combination of passive cooling design, photoelectric power generation and a lithium-ion battery energy storage system that will dramatically eliminate CO2 emissions and allow the campus to operate off-grid during normal operations.
To learn more, please enjoy the articles below that have been written about the project:
• Ojai Quarterly’s Fall 2021 edition, page 32-37
• The Architect’s Newspaper, Sept. 13, 2021
• Ojai Valley News, Sept. 3, 2021
• On The Hill (OVS student newspaper), Jan. 19, 2022
