Fairview High School

1515 Greenbriar Blvd/ Hobart D. Wagener architect/ Brutalism style/ built 1971

When Fairview High School opened at this location in 1971, it was lauded for its 'avant-garde' design. Hexagonal classroom clusters and ramps were architectural elements that set the five-level school apart. The design followed the 'open-school' model popular in the 1970s. The layout also included a student center and lots of ‘community’ space to allow for independent study time.

The building sits on a hilltop overlooking Viele Lake. It steps down the hillside with five floor levels connected by ramps, not stairs. The building walls are cast-in-place concrete with a repetitive, modular geometry. The angular building forms and cascading flat roofs give the building an appearance of a large, crystalline rock outcropping.

Hobart Wagener moved from Portland, Oregon to Boulder in the early 1950s and became a lead designer at the office of James Hunter. After a few years, he started his own company which became a prolific Modernist design firm, producing over 200 innovative buildings in Boulder.