I’m in favor of the new high school design, and I’d like to address criticism of the building’s contemporary aesthetic, offering a professional perspective. I’m a parent of children who will use the future high school, so I have a vested interest, but I’m also a licensed landscape architect, who runs an eponymous practice here in Bristol and an adjunct faculty in the landscape architecture department at RISD.

I appreciate the enormous task that the design team is undertaking to deliver a comprehensive architectural design in the truncated timeframe to achieve the much-needed RIDE funding. I’ve been in their shoes before; it’s not easy.

Over my career, I’ve worked on projects with some of the most contemporary architecture in the nation, such as the Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I have also done renovation of historic landscapes, such as the Blue Garden in Newport. I have as much love for modern and contemporary aesthetic as I do for the historic architecture of our town, but each reflects its own era.

First and foremost, the building must serve the needs of its users - the students, teachers and administrators that will be there on a regular basis. It needs to provide a safe and inviting atmosphere filled with natural daylight, foster an inclusive culture, meet the RIDE criteria, and be adaptive to the changing needs of education. I believe this design achieves the goals established at the beginning of this process, its conceptual arrangement reflects that accomplishment, and its physical expression is the result.

I appreciate the concept of a ‘Village’ and how it represents community for our school, and how the clustering the different volumes breaks down the overall scale of the building – it’s much improved from earlier versions. The most recent renderings of the architecture depict a handsome, contextually appropriate building. The building doesn’t fall within the historic district, and nothing requires it to look like a historic building.

New architecture should reflect the time that we live in, and not be a caricature of an earlier time. To build a modern school full of colonial or greek revival ornamentation doesn’t make sense. It’s akin to designing the new Ford sedan to look like a Model-T. Such an approach lessens the value of the historic architecture that Bristol and Warren do have, which is significant and should be celebrated, but not necessarily copied.

Joseph James
Bristol

The writer is the owner/principal of Eponymous Practice Landscape Architecture firm located in Bristol. He also teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design in the Landscape Architecture Department.