Reimagining a Campus for Discovery and Wellness
Santa Monica High School (SAMOHI), located just a half mile from the Pacific Ocean, has long been a centerpiece of its community. But many of its core facilities, dating back to the 1920s, had reached the end of their useful lives. As part of a bold, 20-year campus redevelopment plan, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District envisioned a new hub that would unite career technical education, visual arts, and athletics at the south end of campus. The challenge was to create a complex that could act as both anchor and connector—bridging the school’s upper and lower terraces while embodying 21st-century learning and wellness.
In collaboration with Moore Ruble Yudell, the 260,000-square-foot Exploration Building and Gold Gymnasium was designed to replace outdated facilities and reimagine the campus core. The new complex is strategically located along Pico Boulevard, where its dramatic massing and interconnected forms announce a new chapter for the school. Organized as two parallel structures stepping down the hillside, the buildings are tied together by an east–west paseo, terraces, and bridges that link program areas and create a strong pedestrian spine across campus.
The three-story Exploration Building houses a diverse set of learning environments. On the ground floor, open labs line the paseo and spill out to outdoor workspaces, plazas, and a new amphitheater. Upper floors contain flexible science and design labs for Project Lead the Way, as well as studios for media, entertainment, and the visual arts. A two-story atrium commons connects these levels, providing a vibrant place for pitch presentations, exhibitions, and informal collaboration. Even the rooftop becomes a classroom, offering shaded outdoor learning areas under photovoltaic canopies with panoramic views of the Santa Monica Mountains and Pacific Ocean.
The Gold Gym rises alongside the hillside, its form stepping gracefully with the terrain. A continuous, curving roof ties together three major spaces: the main competition gym, an auxiliary gym, and a dance studio. This approach minimized excavation while turning the site’s topography into an asset. From Pico Boulevard and the football field beyond, the gym presents an active and welcoming face, with telescoping views that showcase movement and energy across levels.
Both buildings are designed with adaptability in mind, reflecting open-building principles that allow the district to reconfigure spaces as pedagogy evolves. Structural systems, raised floors, and distributed mechanical towers provide long-term flexibility, while daylight, transparency, and indoor–outdoor connections place wellness at the center of daily student life.
Together, the Exploration Building and Gold Gym transform a once-obsolete corner of campus into a vibrant hub of activity. More than new classrooms and courts, the complex acts as an epicenter of connection—between upper and lower campus, between academics and athletics, and between the school and its community.
Recognized for its design excellence, the project was honored with both the Chicago Athenaeum’s American Architecture Award 2025 and the Westside Urban Forum Award.
