About This Project

The Friends School of Portland is a pre-K through 8th grade day school independent of public schools. Its practices stem from long-held Quaker beliefs and traditions. More than its airy classrooms, wooded trails or expansive windows, the greatest advantage at the new Friends School of Portland is what the building lacks: utility bills.

Upon completion, the Friends School of Portland became the first school in Maine to attain a rigorous set of building efficiency standards, known as “passive house” status, that means it will be able to dispense with nearly all of its energy costs. Instead, it will rely on a combination of solar power, modern heating techniques and construction methods so tight that the body heat generated by the school’s 120 occupants was factored into the design.

The roughly $2.5 million school project is the result of three years of fundraising by school boosters and two years of planning by architects and designers. The is an angular 15,500-square-foot structure with half a dozen classrooms, art and music space, administrative offices and, for the first time, a large, indoor area to host the school’s Quaker meetings.