The House of Wise Words is a resource-starved elementary school in Tijuana. Since 2021, a diverse coalition of design firms and civic partners from both sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border has been advancing an innovative comprehensive plan that will be a model for other elementary schools in Tijuana. The underlying premise of the design is that new forms of learning demand a new relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces. This means not just classrooms, but new building types for new programs: live-work spaces, a math lab, a teaching kitchen, an adult resource center – it seeks to make the school a center of community capacity-building.