Encircled by a stand of towering deciduous trees, Benjamin E. Mays High School keeps a low profile, despite having been home to such notable alumni as visual artist Radcliffe Bailey and musician Cee Lo Green, and currently being the largest school serving grades nine through 12 in the Atlanta Public Schools (APS). When it was built in 1981, the 310,000-square-foot concrete-and-brick structure was a bunker of a school: Low ceilings and winding, windowless corridors made for dark and uninviting interior spaces. It lurked on its hilly site, high above a middle-class African-American suburb.
Elegantly renovated and expanded to 350,000 square feet by Perkins+Will's Atlanta office, a 'new' and more welcoming Mays was completed in January 2012, bringing daylight and air to the school's 1,600 students'all on a tight budget. 'There are some students who'll fall asleep no matter what you do,' jokes Dr. Tyronne Smith, an administrator who's been with APS for 30 years and has served as Mays's principal for 12. 'But most of them, when it's bright and airy and the temperature's good, function better.'
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