The 115,000 sf Seba Dalkai Boarding School is a culturally sensitive and technically advanced educational facility, which serves as a community-gathering place for the widely dispersed Native American population of the Seba Dalkai area within the Navajo Nation in Northeastern Arizona.
As a boarding school in the 21st century, the facility needed to feel like home to over 400 children, grades K through 8, and to be a stimulating and technically advanced learning environment. The campus is designed in the shape of a large octagon, derived from traditional Hogan architecture, echoing symbolic and sacred forms of the Navajo people.
The individual campus buildings flow in a symbolic clockwise orientation, respecting the tradition of entering a Hogan and moving to the left through the space. The main campus entrance faces east, the primary cardinal direction. The adjoining structures each pay homage to another of the four cardinal directions as the circle is completed. At the center of the compound, is an outdoor amphitheatre/performance space shared by the students and the community at large.