PROJECT Overcrowding to Opportunity: Reinventing the Portable Classroom

PROJECT SITE Silver Spring, Maryland, United States

PROJECT CATEGORY  AIA Potomac Valley Student Design Awards

Entrant: Evan Lehner

Team Members:
School: University of Maryland
Professor: Peter Noonan

Project Type:

Date of Completion: 5/13/2026
 

Studio Prompt: Thesis provides students with the opportunity to make an individual design statement and demonstrate their professional proficiency as the culmination of their academic experience. The purpose of the initial thesis work is designed to assist each student identify a proposition, develop the basis for a project to explore the proposition, collect base data, analyze the findings of that research and, finally and most importantly, generate viable design concepts that explore alternative approaches that can form the basis for the design effort of the thesis semester.

Therefore, each student will produce a document that will, when completed at the end of the full year:

• Demonstrate student understanding of how to test innovative, research-based proposals through design.
• Assert a proposition with clarity, precision, relevance, and depth that can be explored throughout the course of the thesis.
• Develop the thesis proposition supported by research conducted over the course of the entire thesis program, but principally in ARCH797 Thesis Proseminar
• Discuss the site, building type, programmatic requirements, theoretical and conceptual context, and relevant tectonic/constructional implications of the selected thesis project.
• Postulate and illustrate preliminary design concepts that verify a reasonable "fit" between site, program, theoretical/conceptual propositions, and tectonic/constructional implications represented through alternative design strategies.
 

Project Summary: Every year, millions of American students learn in portable classrooms. Although intended as temporary solutions for overcrowding, many remain in use for decades. Research has shown that portables often provide inferior learning spaces with worse air quality, daylight, acoustics, and thermal comfort than permanent school buildings. As student populations continue to grow and budgets remain tight, schools increasingly rely on portables that were never designed for long-term use.

This project reimagines the portable classroom as a permanent, sustainable, and community-focused piece of educational infrastructure. Rather than treating portables as temporary necessities, this project explored how modular architecture could create healthier learning environments with improved adaptability, flexibility, and reliability. Because schools already serve as hubs within their communities, this project also prioritized investigating how these underutilized structures could be transformed into community accessible assets.

The result is the Adaptive Modular Classroom (AMC), a prefabricated system designed as a kit of parts that can be transported on standard flatbed trucks and assembled on site with minimal disruption. The system supports a variety of educational and community uses, including classrooms, libraries, makerspaces, and recreation spaces. Embodying an ethos of the classroom itself as a teaching medium, the AMCs are designed for low embodied carbon, net-zero energy, and quick disassembly and reuse.

To test the proposal, the project was applied to Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. BHS is the largest high school in the state and relies on many portables to address overcrowding. Two new AMC “Villages” replace existing portables, transforming underutilized campus spaces into active learning hubs that can also serve the broader community through Montgomery County's “Community Use of Public Facilities” program. By reimagining temporary classrooms as civic assets, the project turns a persistent challenge into an opportunity for educational and community investment that can be scaled nationwide.

Jury Comments (if applicable): 

The judges praised the project’s creativity, thorough research, and innovative kit-of-parts approach, particularly its emphasis on sustainability, adaptability, and transforming temporary structures into dignified, high-quality architecture. The strong visuals, diagrams, and models effectively communicated the design concept and its potential scalability beyond educational facilities to applications such as transitional housing, disaster relief, and workforce housing. The research-driven approach, informed by input from users, managers, and builders, was especially appreciated. However, the judges raised questions about cost, feasibility, site responsiveness, and ease of deployment, noting that the level of construction effort might make the structures more appropriate as permanent modular buildings rather than truly portable solutions.

MEDIA FOR DOWNLOAD

Project PDF

Project Narrative (AIAPV)
Design Panel Project PDF (AIAPV)