Breaking the Mold
Independent Schools Look to Unique Buildings to Lure Students
Independent schools compete politely but fiercely for the best students. In those competitions, key themes include academic and athletic excellence and the consistent placement of students in top-notch colleges and universities.
A new campus building that breaks the traditional mold can provide a competitive advantage and sometimes even ignite a trend that other independent schools will follow. In fact, many high-caliber schools consider innovative designs indispensable to their success.
Independent schools often have a collection of historic or new buildings that help shape their identity or brand. A building with an innovative design can be unique without disturbing a school’s defining characteristics. It can strengthen a school’s campus fabric through a thoughtfully crafted, contextually sensitive design.
Also, innovation does not equate to expensive. Careful and creative use of a client’s budget — large or small — can create great value for a school.
Contemporary and Classic
The Westminster School in Simsbury, Conn., has re-imagined the design of academic facilities in a bid to tailor learning spaces to fit today’s more communal style of learning.
The new Armour Academic Center contains the school’s three main academic facilities: math and science, liberal arts, and the library.
The design aims to create a sense of community by eliminating traditional double-loaded corridors in favor of a three-story central atrium with circulating balconies on two sides that lead into classrooms. The third side presents an internal façade, which is the external wall of the library.
Throughout the atrium, seating areas accommodate impromptu or planned meetings between students and faculty and provide expansive views of the surrounding campus.
The new facility also features several green components including a high-efficiency irrigation system that is expected to reduce water consumption by 50 percent, efficient plumbing fixtures, a high-efficiency mechanical system, and a geothermal heat-exchange system.
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The academic center continues the tradition of unique facilities at the campus. Twenty years ago, designers brought Shakespeare’s Globe Theater back to life with the design of a theater arts building.
Situated in a prominent location at the northeastern corner of the campus’s central quadrangle, Westminster’s 400-seat Werner Centennial Center consciously brings the performing arts into the physical and academic mainstream of campus life.
The theater’s massing, sloped roofs and tan brick exterior respond to the school’s historic buildings. An arched main entrance leads to the facility’s two-story lobby. Corridors off the lobby narrow into small passages that open into the three-story theater that rises up to a multi-colored domed ceiling.
To reduce costs, the ceiling features glass-reinforced, factory-fabricated gypsum panels that closely resemble much more expensive materials.
Food For Thought
In recent years, some independent schools have broken the mold of traditional dining halls by replacing cafeteria-style serving lines with food-court serving areas.
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The Taft school in Watertown, Conn., is constructing a food-court-style serving area complimented by three dining rooms.
The food court provides views of kitchen equipment, including a brick-style oven.
The three dining rooms, adjacent to the serving area, feature designs appropriate for breakfast, lunch and dinner in various seating arrangements.
The North Dining Room, for example, has cozy booths and a coffered ceiling. The East Dining Room provides small round tables with seating for six and tall window walls on one side of the restored space provide natural light. The formal West Dining Room features a decorative plaster ceiling with vaulted wood trusses, a large fireplace at the end of the room and tall, gothic windows cut into the walls along the length of the room.
P.E. Facilities
Instead of breaking the mold of physical education facilities, independent schools are making bigger molds.
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For example, the expansive new natatorium completed in 2006 at the Hathaway Brown School, an independent school for girls located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, spans 20,000 square feet.
Windows lining the sides of the high clerestory roof bring in natural light, while minimizing glare on the surface of the water, a problem frequently encountered with indoor pools.
Exposed, white infrastructure systems, along with white tile flooring, help brighten the space. The colonnaded perimeter is punctuated by tall, wide windows that bring in more natural light and form the base of a mansard roof that matches the roofs of other buildings on campus. The space contains so many large windows that the pool often seems like it is outside.
John A. Prokos, FAIA, LEED AP, is principal of Gund Partnership.