Harris Elementary: A School Built on Belonging

By Insiya Rasiwala

At the entrance to the newly redesigned Harris Elementary School in Austin, before you reach the security desk, before the ID check and the door that separates the outside world from the hallways where children learn, there’s a community suite.

The suite was requested by the Austin Independent School District (AISD), and designed as a first act of welcome: a place for community. Here, a family member can enjoy lunch with a child, attend a workshop or access critical resources. It sits at the threshold of the campus, neither fully inside the school nor outside it, and is an invitation centered on belonging for all.

In its original building, Harris Elementary served its corner of Northeast Austin since 1954. Today, approximately 380 students from early childhood through fifth grade attend the school. 84.9% of the student body is Hispanic; 95.3% are economically disadvantaged.

Ultimately, the district asked for more than a new building. They wanted a school that could become a true resource, one designed around the well-being and stability of children. “This project is truly a game-changer for both students and teachers,” says LPA Project Architect Katie Cavazos. “It delivers a high quality of space fora community that has historically been underserved.”

The challenge the team faced was this: How do you design a school that solves not just architectural problems, but human ones, too?

Understanding What a Community Needs

Before LPA drew a single line, the team spent months listening. Over a 25-week design schedule, they conducted 23 separate Campus Architectural Team sessions bringing together teachers, administrators, parents, students and community members. Bilingual gatherings, with LPA staff presenting in both English and Spanish, ensured the predominantly Hispanic community could participate fully.

The questions they asked were deliberately open: What spaces do you gravitate toward? What’s missing? What isn’t working?

“It became important to distinguish between what the community asked for and what they may not have had access to historically,” says LPA Project Interior Designer Cecilia Gutierrez, “and those are not always the same thing.”

Walking the campus during early visits, Cavazos and Gutierrez noticed mosaics made by the art students: a bulldog mascot at the entrance, smaller works lining an outdoor corridor, each one assembled from dozens of distinct pieces that only resolved into something whole when you stepped back. Gutierrez found herself thinking about the children the same way.

The mosaics became a design anchor that impacted the color palette. And as the team spent more time with the community, a second guiding element emerged, one already embedded in the school’s culture.

When conflict arose at Harris, in a classroom or on a campus, the learning community would pause, form a circle and talk it through.

“We started merging the mosaic concept with the idea of the circle, since it was already such a meaningful part of how the school builds connection and resolves issues,” Gutierrez says. “It was a way to reinforce the softness we had with the materials, but also highlight how we’re moving through the space, how it feels fluid and organic.” The circle, as motif, as method and meaning, runs through many design decisions that followed.

For Cavazos, Harris’ “Circle Time” approach inspired the fenestration, finishes and furniture. “It became the organizing idea for how the building thinks about light, connection and movement,” she says. From the circular windows punctuating the walls, to the arched ceiling elements that scoop daylight from clerestories down into the corridors, the curves of the furniture and the soft bend of the walls, circles emerge naturally as one explores the campus.

From philosophy to floor plan, the thinking held.

The school is organized into distinct learning “neighborhoods”: an Early Childhood wing for the youngest learners, and two-story neighborhoods for first through fifth grade, each centered around shared collaboration spaces and connected to secure outdoor areas for play, eating and learning. A dining hall and gym commons serve the whole school, while dedicated outdoor classrooms extend learning beyond the building’s walls. At the heart of the campus sits a three-sided courtyard, open to the sky, anchored by a thriving live oak saved during construction. The result is a campus that moves intuitively, where children navigate their own corner of the school while remaining connected to the whole.

As for that proverbial corner — Austin ISD’s standard preference is for maximum flexibility and no dedicated desks. But Sonya Wyatt, Harris Elementary’s principal, had an idea. For many of the children at the school, kids from crowded homes without their own rooms or quiet space, a desk at school can be the only personal space they have.

“That really hit home,” says Gutierrez. “We weren’t thinking about it in that way until the principal pointed it out.”

The team’s solution was neither to abandon the district’s preference for flexibility nor to ignore Wyatt’s wish. Most pieces of furniture, all designed or selected by LPA, are mobile: half-moon tables that pull apart for individual work or push together for collaboration (like those aforementioned circles), chairs light enough to lift, bookshelves on casters. But children still have choice, agency, and can claim a corner of the room as their own. No student is forced into one way of being in a space. The result is a collection of spaces that can be configured in diverse ways depending on the day, the lesson and the needs of each unique child.

“This is a school where, when you walk in, you feel a calm, soothing welcome — everyone is welcome here,” Wyatt says. “You can see learning happening in every space, for all children.”

Built on Belonging

The notion of belonging and well-being at Harris Elementary operates on multiple registers, and the design team thought carefully about all of them.

Every studio — Austin ISD’s vernacular for a classroom — has a peace corner: a small nook built into the millwork, fitted with a soft pad and a marker board, where a child who needs to step away from the noise can do so without leaving the room.

The peace corner is one expression of a broader school philosophy. Harris runs a formal Social Emotional Learning program that treats emotional literacy as inseparable from academic life. Mindful Mondays, Thankful Tuesdays, Feeling Fridays: The program builds skills for self-regulation, relationship and resilience alongside reading and math. The campus serves a high special-ed population, and the neighborhoods, nooks and varied scales of space throughout the building were designed with that in mind — every child, whatever their needs, should be able to find a place where they can learn. Counseling areas are also woven into the building’s circulation, making support accessible without stigma.

AISD also wanted each studio to feel open and to have light and views, and Cavazos saw daylight as a design requirement rather than an amenity. Each studio features large exterior windows, high ceilings and direct views of the outdoors. Spaces located deeper receive borrowed light through interior windows aligned across corridors, or natural light through clerestories whose curved ceiling elements were engineered to scoop and scatter light further into the building. “Our goal was to connect students to the circadian rhythm of the day,” says Cavazos.

Reflecting on those colorful mosaics, Gutierrez drew from their vibrant palette while softening the saturation: Light blues, sea-foam greens and warm corals allow the space to feel calm rather than stimulating. “The corridors needed to work hard,” Cavazos notes, “so we incorporated whimsy, daylight and scale changes to make those connections feel considered rather than just functional.”

The detailed design and documentation package for Harris Elementary was completed in roughly six months — substantially less than the industry norm. “The bond and district had communicated a move-in date,” says Cavazos, “and we understood how important this was.” The clock, by the time the team began, was already running.

That timeline forced a clarity of thinking that became the project’s material identity. The team called it designing by subtraction.

Where they could expose the structure, they did. Acoustical decking runs overhead in several spaces, eliminating unnecessary ceiling assemblies. Flooring is primarily polished concrete. The outdoor canopies, essential under the Texas sun but beyond the original budget, were stripped to their purest structural form, delivering more shade for less material and less embodied carbon. When costs ruled out wall cladding, the team leaned into paint: Bold motifs animate the corridors and turn a constraint into a design choice.

The same discipline applied to what went inside the walls. Studios and collaboration spaces are finished with Cradle to Cradle–certified rubber flooring: no vinyl, no plastics, none of the antimicrobial additives that LPA’s research team found to be more harmful than protective. LPA Designer Liliana Márquez Trujillo cross-referenced every product against its environmental declarations before it went into the building. “By reducing material use, you also reduce embodied carbon,” she says. That research was rigorous enough to change the district’s own educational specification for future projects.

The result: Harris Elementary is pursuing LEED Gold alongside a Three Star rating from Austin Energy Green Building.

Ultimately, “This [school] brightens the entire neighborhood,” José Vela, Mayor Pro Tem of Austin, said at the school’s grand opening. “This is pride in our city and investment in our kids.”

Colectivos de Aprendizaje

The bilingual campus features signage in English and Spanish on every door and corridor. Márquez Trujillo supported the work, owing to her Mexican heritage.

The learning neighborhoods became colectivos de aprendizaje, a Latin Spanish phrase meaning “collective learning communities.” “We kept the same collaborative and inclusive tone throughout,” she says.

A community plaza at the front provides shade and seating for parents who gather each afternoon to wait for their children. And the community suite does its quiet work: open to all, a place to gather, a signal that this school was built for the whole neighborhood, not just the students who walk through the secured door.

Some schools are built to contain children. This one was designed to hold them, and the community they belong to.

All of the images of Harris Elementary’s new campus in this article were taken by Guadalajara–based photographer César Béjar. Trained as an architect at the University of Guadalajara, with studies at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Béjar has been published in Casabella, The Architectural Review and The New York Times.

The team wanted a photographer who could capture the feeling of the new campus, not just its architectural integrity. LPA designer Liliana Márquez Trujillo, who had known of Béjar since her own architecture school days in Guadalajara, advocated for him to photograph the project. “He has the sensibility to capture the atmosphere of spaces,” she says. “And because he’s Latin, he was going to be able to read the narrative of this building and this project.”

When Béjar arrived on site, he made a quiet decision: He would shoot without artificial lights. The building’s daylight strategy, clerestories, generous glazing and carefully oriented fenestration meant most spaces needed nothing else. He shot at sunrise and sunset, capturing the quality of the Texas sky and the exterior spaces designed for the students who move through them. The images that resulted are bathed in the natural light Cavazos and her team worked so hard to sustain.

Insiya Rasiwala has written for Conde Nast Traveler, The Globe and Mail and other publications.