Reimagining Brighton High School

(TEST) Brighton High School is housed in a 1930 Collegiate Gothic building designed by architects O’Connell and Shaw. While this landmark structure instills a sense of nobility through its beautifully crafted limestone facades, it also faces challenges of deferred maintenance and interior spaces that do not meet the functional needs of twenty-first-century education. In the fall of 2021, thirty-five students and three faculty members from the architecture program of Wentworth Institute of Technology envisioned new futures for the building, working in conjunction with leadership from Brighton High School, Boston Public Schools, and the Boston Mayor’s Office. Wentworth students engaged with ninth graders from the school to explore ways the building could be transformed—aiming to enrich the school’s educational experiences through architectural adaptation. The proposals included in this publication were informed by a central question: how can we be stewards of an existing building while shaping its meaningful evolution? Part of a longer engagement between Boston Public Schools and Wentworth, the Brighton-Wentworth initiative exemplifies an active model of learning in which designers have a productive impact on issues not exclusively architectural, but also related to equity, diversity, community, economic opportunity, and the environment. The initiative unleashed collaborative and open-ended creativity involving participants from Wentworth, Brighton High School, and the City of Boston at large, including architects, designers, educators, engineers, historians, preservationists, and other advisors. The ideas sponsored throughout this effort and summarized in this publication are healthy reminders of the essential value of existing architecture—and its renewal—to the lifeblood of our cities and communities.