Academy Campus

Academy wins 2012 Sustainable Santa Fe Award!

The Academy Campus - At a Glance

The 18,000 square feet of buildings are comprised of:

• Meeting Facilities – a spacious Gallery Room for conferences, performances, presentations, and trainings; warmly furnished workshop and meeting rooms, a high-tech media center, exhibit space, kitchen and dining areas, small breakout rooms and a large open-air patio suitable for meetings and gatherings.
• Contemplative Space – a dedicated circular meditation room for contemplative practices, teachings and ceremonies.
• Offices and Gallery – Academy business offices, conference room, Seton Gallery and Archives.
• Care-takers quarters, rooms for visiting faculty, and an art studio.

Take a Tour

We offer tours of our campus as a way to create more awareness of the Academy’s vision and the programs that we are developing. 

Our tours also address the unique and creative green design of the building, and the incorporation of our Learning Landscape in the vision of our campus as a center for transformational learning.


For information about campus and/or Learning Landscape tours, email Marissa Roybal.


Facility Rental

Our campus is the home of the Academy and all of our programs with teachers, social leaders, organizations and community members. We do not yet offer the Academy Campus for rent for external use. However, we do partner with some other organizations, whose missions are closely aligned with our own, and occasionally host events, meetings and workshops. If you would like more information on our policy and whom we partner with, please contact Marissa Roybal.

Green Throughout



The Academy Campus is designed to be a Gold LEED certified building and as such will be endorsed by the United States Green Building Council. The extensive array of ‘green’ features include: geothermal heating and cooling, solar panels for hot water heating, photo-voltaic panels for the generation of electricity, rainwater harvesting, and grey and black water recycling systems for irrigation. The entire physical plant has been designed as an educational resource for sustainable building in Santa Fe, and the landscaping is being created as a unique learning environment called the Learning Landscape.

• Landscaping is xeric with water provided from the roof runoff.
• A meditative garden is being created from the architecturally significant remains of the original Seton Castle.
• The majority of the property will remain in its natural state as open, green space that is accessible to the local community.

Click here for more general facts about the campus, and here for green facts.

55,000 gallon water tank

Swales at Academy Campus

2012 Sustainable Santa Fe Award Winner

We are delighted to announce we have received the 2012 Sustainable Santa Fe Award for Water Conservation. This award recognizes the Academy’s innovative approach to water usage and the landscaping for our new campus.

When we began construction of a new campus in Santa Fe in 2008, we sought to honor our vision by designing and building in ways that work with the natural world, rather than impose upon it. Conserving and recycling water was a top priority. Working with Wolf Corp and Richard Jennings of Earthwrights Designs, we created state-of-the-art treatment systems to recapture grey and black water for irrigation. Likewise, rainwater and snow runoffs are harvested and discreetly channeled to an underground 55,000 gallon tank.

Combined with careful xeric landscaping by Christie Green of Down to Earth landscaping (see Learning Landscape), these systems have made it possible for us to meet our goals of conserving water while rebuilding the soils and stimulating new growth of native plants on our 86-acre campus, fostering an ecosystem that will naturally capture and conserve rainwater and seasonal floods in the future. Finally, to extend the project we sponsored production of a short documentary about water conservation on our site and others, which is nearing completion and has already been used in local high school science courses.

Reflections on Seton Castle: Five Years After the Fire
A letter from Aaron Stern, the Academy's Founder