Kathleen Cei Photo

The César Pelli-designed Cooperative Arts + Humanities School in downtown New Haven.

The corner of College and Crown might seem like an odd place for a new high school, but such is the plight of the modern urban educational institution. Luckily, the new New Haven Cooperative Arts + Humanities School and its neighboring popular nightlife locales keep different hours and, with the exception of a fake ID or two, there's probably very little overlap in clientele.

Designed by the Elm City's rockstar architecture firm Pelli Clarke Pelli, the 145,000-sq.-ft. brick-and-glass performing and creative arts school wears its heart on its sleeve. From the intersection of Crown and College, a dominant corner window reveals a double-height dance studio that will reveal to lucky passers-by a free performance.

The large façade that runs along College Street, however, is a much more subtle indicator of the school's mission: A large expanse of glass is silk-screened with images of leaves from native trees alluding to the print-making, drawing, and painting studios within. The natural motif also testifies to the new structure's sustainable aspects.

Even before "green" became a buzzword, sustainability has been an important element in the work of the firm's founding partner and former dean of Yale's School of Architecture, César Pelli. The Coop is no exception. One could write something esoteric about pretreated outside air and mechanical system operation efficiencies, but it seems sufficient to say that for its size, thebuilding is exceptionally energy efficient. While similar buildings use over 100,000 BTUs of energy per square foot per year, the Coop uses only 53,000.

Surprisingly, for such an efficient building, none of the school's many windows are operable, because the automated environmental system is so carefully calibrated that an open window would make the entire system unreliable. It's like when your parents yelled at you for leaving the back door open ... only at the scale of a city block.

Of course, it would be remiss not to mention the school's two theaters: a small experimental black box theater and an impressive 350-seat public theater. Complete with orchestra pit, fly loft, and professional lighting equipment, the acoustically-optimized public theater offers the school a new opportunity to engage with local theater companies. New collaborations are expected for instance between the school and the Shubert Theater and Yale Repertory Theatre. Coop is also equipped with high-end recording studios. While these new facilities have drawn students (and an even longer wait-list), one senior noted the almost business-like environs made it feel "a lot more corporate."

Like the nearby Yale Center for British Art, the New Haven Cooperative Arts + Humanities School is an institution that will eventually include new arts-based retail space along College Street. We can only hope they fare better than the abandoned shopping center across the street.

But the urban implications of the new structure extend beyond retail. A new alley between the high school and Hula Hanks accommodates school buses, though the number of buses exceeds available space. Thus, the drive down Crown Street between 2 and 3 p.m. on weekdays has become like a test driving course with yellow school buses idling on both sides of the street between parked cars, requiring drivers to weave and dodge their way through the intersection.

The New Haven Cooperative Arts + Humanities School isn't an iconic piece of architecture that will draw tourists from around Connecticut, but that's never been Pelli's MO.

Instead, we have a building that's at a scale appropriate for a neighborhood arts and entertainment district and looks on track to truly engage the public with the incredible arts program within.

Jimmy Stamp is a graduate student at Yale's School of Architecture and editor of the blog Life Without Buildings. He can be reached at jimmy@lifewithoutbuildings.net.