Emil & Grace Shihadeh Innovation Center
A joint venture with Laurel Ridge Community College and local industry partners, the 54,000-square-foot Shihadeh Innovation Center is a hub of workforce development for the community – preparing both Winchester high school students and community members to meet the demands of the regional job market.
Project Details
- Client: Winchester Public Schools
- Location: Winchester, VA
- Scope: Renovation + Addition
- Completion: 2021
- Size: 54,000 SF
- Performance: EUI 41 kBTU/sf/year (measured)
A radical transformation of an existing unused elementary school, the Shihadeh Innovation Center prepares and empowers students with marketable workforce skills. The interdisciplinary culture at the Innovation Center allows CTE teachers, academic teachers, and students to work together on real-world problems. All John Handley High School students can apply their academic knowledge to practical skills while adults and professionals in the community can learn a new trade or mentor youth interested in their professional field.
Designed in partnership with Reader + Swartz Architects, this building provides a new home for the CTE programs formerly housed at Handley High School. The Innovation Center is organized into three academies that equip students with skills and credentials needed for their future careers. The Professional Skills academy houses construction technique programs including labs for carpentry, welding, plumbing, mechanical, and electrical trades. Students in the Health Sciences academy gain skills related to nursing, occupational and physical therapy, and EMT in labs that emulate real-world hospital and clinical environments. The Advanced Technologies academy encourages innovation through programs dedicated to architectural drafting, design, and fabrication. The public zone, which includes small group hubs, a presentation forum, and a community café, fosters a sense of togetherness and facilitates opportunities for collaboration between CTE and academic competencies.
With high visibility work labs, dynamic collaboration and presentation spaces, abundant natural daylighting, and healthy materials and air quality, the Shihadeh Innovation Center breathes new life into an underutilized building and supports discovery and experimentation for all Winchester high schoolers.
If we can help educate and give people the chance to make good wages, and also give back to the community while we’re doing it, what bigger win can there be?
We connect Career Technical Education with core academic education - there is truly innovative learning happening in this building.
We should have this in every single region of the Commonwealth. That’s how we’re going to be successful.
Collaborators
MEP Engineering: CMTA
Structural Engineering: Structural Concepts
Civil Engineering: Pennoni
Environmental Graphic Design + Wayfinding: Iconograph
Contractor: Howard Shockey & Sons
Project Photography: Lincoln Barbour
Additional Drawings
Access Diagram
Programming Zones
Collaboration Areas
Existing Conditions
Existing Front Exterior
Existing West Entry
Community Engagement
Educator Engagement
Educator Engagement
The Innovation Center includes specialized spaces to support the intended curriculum and a diverse range of academic programs. “The Five C’s” of the Shihadeh Innovation Center provide guiding principles for how learning happens in the Center and connects to the larger global job market:
- Critical Thinking – Student owned projects that solve authentic problems through critical thinking with engaging student designed activities requiring reflection, revision, and renewal.
- Creative Thinking – Projects blended with personal choice and developmental solutions while finding resources and discovering answers to in-depth questions for contemporary problems.
- Citizenship – Student-owned learning processes, mentorships with community partners, and a visible celebration of place.
- Collaboration – Mastering competencies while acquiring time management, perseverance, and team conceptual understanding for the modern workplace through project and blended instructional strategies.
- Communication – Projects based on interactive community partnerships with businesses focusing on a “work local, think global” directive requiring student-initiated collaboration.
Prior to building design, a programming and planning phase sought to explore how space can support “Project Based Learning.” Engagement with Winchester Public Schools educators and leadership directly informed the range of programming that the Innovation Center ultimately includes, with a focus on flexible, collaborative learning environments and high-intensity, “real-world” workshops. In addition, preference was expressed for less “finished” spaces with the ability to adapt easily, as needed.
