Centerbrook was honored recently for its renovations and expansion of an historic library by the International Interior Design Association and the Library Leadership and Management Association. The Carnegie Library, which is located on the campus of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, was chosen as the Outstanding Historical Renovation Project – one of seven categories in the 2012 Library Interiors Competition.

The Best of Competition winner will be announced at the American Library Association Annual Conference on June 24 at the Anaheim Convention in California. The winners also will be featured on the IIDA website and in Contract and American Libraries magazines.

The new addition and extensive renovations were needed to keep pace with Cold Spring Harbor’s steady growth. The heart of the 4,425-square-foot addition is a new reading room on the first floor. The addition also houses space for the Laboratory’s archives, which include: the personal papers of Nobel Laureates Dr. James D. Watson, Barbara McClintock, and Alfred D. Hershey; a rare book collection; a room for scholarly research; rooms housing various scientific journals; a new entry and improved access for disabled users; and a collection of over 100,000 rare photographs chronicle molecular biology's rise following World War II.

Renovations of the existing two-story structure encompassed replacing interior walls, ceiling, lighting fixtures, wiring and plumbing as well as the restoration of much of the classical oak trim, stair rails, and banisters. The Centerbrook design team was led by partner Jim Childress, partner emeritus Bill Grover, Todd Andrews, Ken MacLeod, and Vicki McCourt.

The Carnegie Building has played an important role in the history of American science. It was where plant scientist George H. Shull discovered the value of “hybrid vigor” in corn genetics in 1908, a finding that eventually led to the tripling of commercial corn yields in the United States. In 1953, scientific facilities were removed from the building, which then became a library.

JAX Genomic Medicine, a 173,000-square-foot facility being planned in Connecticut to house 300 biomedical researchers, is one of four laboratory and medical projects currently being designed by Centerbrook Architects and Planners. The new facility is being built by The Jackson Laboratory, a nonprofit research institution and National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center based in Maine. Construction will begin later this year on the facility, which Centerbrook is designing in collaboration with Tsoi/Kobus & Associates of Cambridge, Mass.

Jackson Senior Director of Facilities John Fitzpatrick noted of the choice of architecture firms, “Each of the design finalists presented compelling teams and initial concepts for the facility. But the team of Centerbrook-TKA reflected a deep appreciation of The Jackson Laboratory’s culture. They demonstrated a strong personal connection and commitment to the project, an understanding of the need for the facility to be a great place to do cutting-edge science, and a commitment to deliver a world-class facility through low-impact design concepts.”

With a total staff of about 1,400 people in Bar Harbor, Maine and Sacramento, California, The Jackson Laboratory’s mission is to discover the genetic basis for preventing, treating and curing human disease, and to enable research and education for the global biomedical community.

Centerbrook also is designing similar projects for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Quinnipiac University, and the Southern Connecticut State University.

At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a biomedical and educational institution on Long Island, Centerbrook is renovating and expanding Demerec Laboratory. CSHL, where Centerbrook has designed some 45 projects since the mid-1970s, is ranked number one in the world by Thomson Reuters for the impact of its research in molecular biology and genetics. It has been home to eight Nobel Prize winners. In 2009, the new 100,000-square-foot Hillside Research Campus designed by Centerbrook at CSHL opened at CSHL.

In North Haven, Connecticut, the firm has completed and begun implementing a Master Plan for Quinnipiac University’s new 104-acre Graduate Campus, which will encompass the establishment of the Frank H. Netter, M.D. School of Medicine as a part of a Health Professions Center. When it opens in 2013, the medical school will be the third in the state.

Also in Connecticut, Centerbrook is designing a new 98,332-square-foot Academic and Laboratory Science building on the New Haven campus of Southern Connecticut State University. It will house teaching and research laboratories for nano-technology, physics and optics, the earth sciences, the environmental sciences, cancer research, astronomy, biology, and chemistry.

A new book on residential architecture includes among its 47 profiles of houses around the world a six-page feature on Lakewood House. The house was designed by Centerbrook Partner Mark Simon, FAIA, with Ed Keagle, AIA, serving as the Project Manager. The book, “21st Century Architecture: Designer Houses,” is available from Images Publishing.

The rustic house is nestled in a northeast forest with lake views. Connected shed roofs aim at the water and the sun, providing deep overhangs to shade porches with tall columns that support a solar screen of indigenous logs. These rhythmically placed natural shades allow passive solar warmth in the winter, but keep the house cool in summer. The first floor flows seamlessly into the outdoors and onto a sitting porch through folding glass walls that open from side to side, merging interior and exterior into one great living space. Lakewood House features sustainable geothermal heating and cooling, abundant insulation, natural and local materials, and a highly efficiency furnace that runs on biofuel.

Inside, the main house is united by an arcing two-story hall that doubles as a grand entry. Lined with walls made from local stones at the first floor, it has a catwalk balcony above leading to bedrooms and a studio. The hall serves as the main street for the house, connecting the garage and service rooms in the west with the kitchen and finally the living room at the east.

Bob Ryan, the veteran Boston Globe sports columnist, spent the winter touring all 21 Division I basketball arenas in New England, critiquing them and ranking his Top Ten. He had been to many of them before, of course, but he was surprised with the one he liked best. Despite including the likes of Gampel Pavilion, this contest was a blowout.

“We have a clear winner,” he wrote. “It sits on a hill in Hamden, Connecticut. I have saved the best for last, although I can't say I planned it that way. But when you tell people you're going all over New England to see college basketball games, the first thing they say is, "Have you been to Quinnipiac [TD Bank Sports Center]?”

Designed by a team from Centerbrook Architects led by partner Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA, the 180,000-square-foot facility opened in 2007 and helped the men’s and woman’s hockey teams earn an invitation to join the prestigious Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference.

Ryan continued: “The fact of the matter is Quinnipiac got it right. Athletic Director Jack McDonald, a BC guy from Braintree and former Eagles track coach, was the lucky AD who got to plan this building, which houses matching venues for hockey and basketball. After entering the structure, you turn right for hockey and left for basketball. On either side you'll find theater seats [3,286 seats for hockey 3,570 for basketball], perfectly pitched in an oval to enjoy the action. And you ought to see the locker rooms, meeting facilities and other stuff, for both men and women. There’s none better in New England.”

Jon Lavy, AIA, and Jay Klebeck, AIA, were Project Manager and Assistant Project Manager respectively for the TD Bank Sports Center.

A number of Centerbrook projects and architects have been in the news recently, highlighted by the report in The Hartford Courant that Jackson Laboratory had selected Centerbrook and another firm, Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, to design its new 173,000-square-foot genomic medical facility in Farmington Connecticut. JAX Genomic Medicine, a new nonprofit research institute for genomics-based medicine, will house 300 biomedical researchers, technicians and support staff in advanced computing facilities and laboratories.

Connecticut Magazine profiled partner Mark Simon’s house in its March issue [PDF], and American Libraries Magazine published a piece by Centerbrook principal Charles Mueller on library design in the digital age. The architectural website ArchNewsNow also included Mueller’s article in its aggregation of articles. Simon also was interviewed about architectural trends on NPR’s Faith Middleton Show. The website Architects & Artisans ran two posts about Centerbrook projects: the use of color for Hillside Campus at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the iconization of Handsome Dan, Yale’s venerable mascot. Building Design & Construction Magazine published a rendering and overview of the Hotchkiss School’s new biomass facility, which is under construction.

University Liggett School, a prominent pre-Kindergarten through twelfth grade private school in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, has hired Centerbrook to integrate its Middle School, currently in a separate location, into its main Cook Road Campus. The16-acre academic campus is organized around a 1928 building that earlier housed the oldest continually-operating independent school in the state. The site includes an adjacent 23 acres of athletic fields and a hockey arena. Liggett was founded in 1878.

With an enrollment of more than 550 students and growing, Liggett’s needs have evolved since its last major additions in the 1950s and 60s. Incremental changes to campus continued through the 1980’s, and in 2006 the school undertook a Master Plan to assess its current and future needs, indentifying much of the school building’s envelope, infrastructure, energy use, and teaching spaces as being in need of upgrading.

Liggett recently engaged Centerbrook to implement the first phase of the Master Plan by bringing the Middle School onto the main campus. Centerbrook’s design weaves the Middle School into the current school fabric through the creative re-use of existing buildings and some minor new construction. Care was taken in the planning to ensure that the Middle School students will have their own identifiable and carefully-scaled spaces within the larger campus.

Construction is underway and slated to be completed for the 2012-2013 academic year. Mark Simon, FAIA, is the Centerbrook Partner-in-Charge and Hank Altman, AIA, is the Project Manager.

Centerbrook is pleased to announce that Justin Hedde and Anna Shakun have joined its architectural staff. “Anna and Justin have been making important contributions to a number of current projects from day one,” said Partner Jim Childress, FAIA. “Each brings to us a unique set of skills and experience at a time when the firm’s workload has been increasing.”

Shakun graduated from Moscow Architectural Institute in her native Russia with a Masters of Architecture. She subsequently was involved in preservation and adaptive reuse projects, participating in city planning efforts for the rehabilitation of historic sites in downtown Moscow. After coming to the United States in 2001, she has worked for several architectural firms in Illinois and California, most recently Bassenian Lagoni Architects of Newport Beach, California. She also earned a second architectural degree, a Masters from the University of Illinois in Champaign Urbana, where she received several fellowships and served as a teaching assistant in university’s history and preservation department. Her design for Shibuya Media Park in Tokyo received a first place in Annual Chicago AIA Awards Competition. In addition to urban planning, her design experience encompasses hospitality, wellness, commercial projects, and single family and mixed use residential. She enjoys drawing and engaging in art projects with her six-year-old son.

Justin Hedde is a Connecticut native who earned his Bachelor of Design in Architecture from the University of Florida, Summa Cum Laude, and his Masters of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture, where he was the recipient of the Samuel J. Fogelson Memorial Scholarship Award. He has worked for architecture firms in Florida and Massachusetts and was the field crew manager for a residential building project while at Yale. His experience also includes 3D Revit modeling, rendering, and furniture design. His travels have taken him to Vicenza, Italy, where he studied the works of Palladio, and the United Kingdom to learn about English gardens and landscaping. He enjoys fishing local waters with spear guns he crafts for himself.

Centerbrook has completed a Master Plan for the Berkshire Country Day School in Stockbridge, Massachusetts that addresses, in conjunction with an existing strategic plan, physical improvements to the historic campus over the next ten years. The inclusive planning process encompassed interviews with all faculty and staff members, a series of interactive workshops with school leaders and other members of the academic community, and assessment of existing buildings, infrastructure, and mechanical systems.

An independent school for pre-kindergarten through ninth-grade students, Berkshire Country Day was founded in 1946 and is set on the 27-acre Brooks Farm, which once was home to Andrew Carnegie and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The school sends its graduates on to independent high schools such as Hotchkiss and Groton.

Centerbrook Partner Jim Childress, FAIA, and Associate Peter C. Majewski, AIA and LEED BD+C, led the planning effort that focused its findings on building interiors, increased energy efficiency, and further stewardship opportunities on the school’s bucolic property.

Centerbrook has worked on more than 70 academic campuses nationwide, including more than two dozen independent schools, among them Phillips Andover Academy, Horace Mann School, and Choate Rosemary Hall.

Praising its architecture and ambiance, the international travel publisher and reviewer Andrew Harper has chosen the Centerbrook designed Ocean House in Watch Hill, Rhode Island as a 2012 Grand Award Winner, one of two properties in North America to be so recognized. The hotel also was named among “the best of the best” by AAA, which rated it one of its 2012 Five Diamond Award winners. The announcement of the AAA Awards was published in a USA Today article featuring a photo of the Ocean House.

Other recent accolades for the Ocean House were its inclusion in Condé Nast Traveler’s 2011 Hot List and Readers’ Choice Picks as well as Travel & Leisure Magazine’s 2011 500 World’s Best Hotels.

Harper began his description of why he chose the new resort hotel this way: “An astonishingly faithful recreation of an 1868 Victorian mansion, with the same sunny clapboard exterior, black shutters, wide verandas and soaring mansard roof. It evokes the charm of another age, but is also a comfortable modern hotel.” He goes on to comment on the “inviting spa” and “meticulously wrought moldings, paneled doors, thoughtfully executed lighting … sumptuous baths with marble vanities, river-stone flooring in the showers, and soaking tubs with their own flat-panel TVs.”

The replicated Ocean House – with 49 rooms and 23 private residences, all with spectacular ocean views – reopened in 2010. Centerbrook, led by Partner Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA, designed the new structure based on the early 20th century core of the original shoreline landmark, while adding some modern architectural strivings and myriad amenities.

Centerbrook has received four awards for the Ocean House, including an Interiors Award from Contract Magazine and a Design Award from the American Institute of Architects, Rhode Island Chapter.

The past year presented a number of intriguing design opportunities for Centerbrook Architects, among them a university laboratory building, a highly sustainable environmental campus for an independent school, a new medical school, and master plans for two Ivy League institutions. Eight completed projects, including two museums and a resort hotel, were recognized with 14 design awards, and two Centerbrook designed houses were published in the book “200 Homes” by Images Publishing featuring residential architecture from around the world.

The firm’s LEED portfolio reached 21 in 2011, highlighted by two buildings – Health Care REIT’s corporate headquarters in Ohio and the John Dorr Nature Laboratory in Connecticut – which were certified Platinum and Gold respectively by the United States Green Building Council. Publications and websites, ranging from The New York Times, Metropolis Magazine, and the Huffington Post to New England Home and JetsonGreen.com, also took note of the firm’s work. Five posts from its blog, The Millrace, were picked up and published by other media.

On the technology front, Centerbrook’s computer infrastructure entered the “V-sphere,” a virtual server world that dramatically minimizes the need for bulky onsite hardware and energy consumption. The firm continued to be a leader in technical capabilities and advanced communications systems that integrate architectural design with the construction process. A large Centerbrook academic project in Colorado was chosen as an illustration of the benefits of the latest 3D design software and was published in the official training guide for Autodesk Revit 2012.

A record-setting year of rainfall (67 inches) meant that the adjacent Falls River kept Centerbrook’s hydropower turbine whirling in the bowels of the home office. Waterpower combines with two solar panel arrays, a pond-source geothermal system, and conservation measures to account for 40 percent of the office power needs from onsite green generation.

Centerbrook has completed and begun implementing a Master Plan for Quinnipiac University’s new 104-acre North Haven Campus, which will encompass the establishment of the Frank H. Netter, M.D. School of Medicine as a part of a Health Professions Center. The development of the university’s third campus, formerly the headquarters of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, began in 2009 with the completion of the new home for the School of Health Sciences, a $30 million 190,000-square-foot project. It confers degrees in nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, diagnostic imaging, and for pathologist assistants, radiology assistants, and. physician assistants.

As with the Health Sciences project, the $45 million Medical School calls for the renovation and reconfiguration of an existing office building, which totals 140,000 square feet. The two schools will be joined on all three floors, and Centerbrook is designing a formal entrance connecting them that will serve as the gateway to the graduate campus. In addition to a main lobby affording access to an auditorium and two lecture halls, the Grand Entry will house a Medical Library.

The Medical School will focus on primary care and global health, and will join Yale University and the University of Connecticut as the third such institution in Connecticut. A phased opening beginning in 2012 and completed in 2013 is planned, and eventual enrollment will be 150 students per class. Quinnipiac’s schools of Nursing and Education and the Graduate Admissions Office also are located in the Health Sciences building. A third and fourth building on the site will be renovated to house research laboratories and facilities for its existing schools of Law and Business respectively.

Adding a medical school to Quinnipiac University’s other graduate programs will further advance its national reputation. Of its 3,600 peer institutions nationwide, only 89 have both a law and medical school.

Centerbrook has designed more than 45 projects on the Quinnipiac’s three campuses since the late 1970s. Founded in 1929 as a two-year college, today Quinnipiac is a major university with 5,700 undergraduates and 2,500 graduate students. National ranking surveys that place it in the top tier of American universities frequently cite the allure of its campus and modern facilities.

Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA, has been the Partner-in-Charge of all projects at the University since 1978. Agatha Pestilli, AIA, is Project Manager for the Health Professions Center.

Two Centerbrook designed residential projects were included in the recently published book “200 Homes” edited by Mark Cleary (Images Publishing, 2011).

Both houses are in the Northeast. In one, a vestibule set between two stately chimneys connects the slightly asymmetrical, cathedral-ceilinged pavilions of the House in the Connecticut Hills designed by Centerbrook Partners Mark Simon and Jim Childress, both FAIA. The house serves as a gateway to a bucolic estate.

The other, a large addition to a House in the Hudson Valley, was designed by Centerbrook Partner Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA, and Principal Charles G. Mueller, AIA. It extends outward from a 19th century farmhouse that now appears from a country road as a string of traditional, connected barns. It contains a gymnasium and exercise room, spa, great room, bunk room, office, summer room, and a pool house serving an existing pool.

The 600-page book features well illustrated profiles of houses from around the world.

Molly Hubbs, who is pursuing a Masters of Architecture at the University of Texas, is finishing a six-month internship at Centerbrook as part of the requisite work experience for her degree. Her command of digital design software, such as Revit and SketchUp, has made valuable contributions to a number of design projects, among them a master plan for the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and the proposed expansion of the Mary Cheney Library in Manchester, Connecticut.

“Molly has been a simply wonderful addition to our staff at a time when we have seen our workload increasing,” said Centerbrook Partner Chad Floyd, FAIA. “She is talented, hard-working, plus a joy to work with. She is much in demand by design teams looking for assistance on their projects.”

An Alabama native, Hubbs earned her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in Music and Aural and Spatial Design from Furman University, where she was a National Merit Scholarship Finalist and a member of two honor societies. She also played in the school orchestra. At Texas she has worked as a research and teaching assistant, earned several travel fellowships, and served as an officer in the student chapter of the American Institute of Architects. In her travels to Japan and Finland she pursued her interest in wood construction.

Her internship began in June and will run into early December, after which she will be missed. She will graduate in 2012 with her Masters.

Centerbrook is designing a new science and math building for a leading independent day school to enhance varied curricular approaches for the study of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The 52,000-square-foot building will support the school’s teaching goals by facilitating proven as well as innovative teaching techniques.

The Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) of Missouri has tasked Centerbrook with creating engaging and flexible spaces geared to the latest pedagogical concepts for teaching science and mathematics in the competitive environment of the 21st century. School officials point out that studies rank American students 17th in science and 25th in math out of 34 developed countries, lagging behind China, Japan, Russia and England.

Located in the heart of the campus, the new facility also will house a Center for Community that features an 800-seat amphitheater, small and sociable gathering spaces, an indoor/outdoor fireplace, faculty offices, and common areas with views of a courtyard with plant and vegetable gardens. The new building will serve as a bridge between MICDS’s two scholastic neighborhoods: liberal arts and science.

To accommodate the different ways that students learn, the math and science spaces will be large enough for individual and group study along with lectures, seminars, and hands-on experimentation. While designed specifically for math and individual sciences (biology, chemistry, and physics), the spaces are deliberately comingled to encourage the sharing of ideas and resources.

The mathematics rooms are designed with break out areas for small study groups to problem-solve or focus on a specific project, while each science room is a combination classroom/laboratory – or “clab” – that melds traditional teaching spaces with laboratories for application-based learning.

“We wanted to provide spaces large enough to allow classrooms to have fully equipped labs for biology, chemistry and physics,” said Lisa Lyle, MICDS Head of School. “Oftentimes, in a setting where classrooms are separate from labs, you lose teachable moments when students ask questions that could easily be answered in a lab setting.” She added, “Though the design process will continue for the next several months, there is one word to describe the facility: spectacular!”

The 1,200-square-foot clabs are 30 percent larger than typical high school classrooms and allow for both discussion and hands-on examination of the science topic being addressed. The biology and physics labs contain research benches that can be moved and reconfigured for different lessons.

The transformation of Eli mascot Handsome Dan I (1889-1897) from flesh and blood … to taxidermy … to iconic statuary standing guard outside the historic Yale Bowl was a story told last week from Boston to the bayous to the Rocky Mountains – and farther still on the Internet:

Led by partner Mark Simon, FAIA and a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture, and Associate Sue Wyeth, AIA, Centerbrook shepherded the delicate process of turning stuffed Dan into bronzed Dan as part of its design work at the university’s Athletic Campus on Derby Avenue.

Featured in a nationally distributed article by the Associated Press, Dan appeared in such varied media as the Harvard Crimson (which cribbed the story from the Yale Daily News), the Desert News of Salt Lake City, The New Haven Register, and Daily Comet of Lafourche Parish, Louisiana. Noble Dan was installed on his granite pedestal on November 9, just in time to have a profound psychological impact on The Game between the Bulldogs and the Pilgrims.

Jefferson B. Riley, FAIA, received the Distinguished Alumnus Award recently from Greenwich Country Day School, an independent pre-K through ninth grade school in Greenwich, Connecticut. As honoree, he gave a presentation last month to the students about architects, explaining who they are, what they do, and how they do it. He took the students on an illustrated history of architectural design from ancient Rome to Michelangelo, Thomas Jefferson, Julia Morgan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore, Zaha Hadid, and Jeanne Gang, among many others.

As images of a Palladian villa or Saarinen’s curvaceous buildings appeared, Riley engaged the students in examining the various approaches and movements that have influenced architecture through the centuries, explaining the difference between a “Pursuit of Happiness” approach to design and a “Discovery of Joy” approach. “Architects believe, above all else,” he said, “in the power of architecture to tell stories about us, to convey our values and aspirations, and to lift our spirits.” He stressed how a building’s sociability, its response to its site and circumstance, the care it takes of the earth‘s resources, its sense of the handmade and craft, its ornament and symbols are all critical to creating places that become beloved. “The act of drawing by hand is crucial,” he added, “to the art of making architecture, especially in the age of the computer.”

Riley, a founding partner of Centerbrook Architects and also recipient of the 1999 Distinguished Achievement Award from his collegiate alma mater, Lawrence University, addressed how architects touch all of our daily lives in many ways by designing not just buildings but landscapes, bridges, furniture, and even cars, boats, cutlery, and tea kettles. The future for architects, he predicted, would involve more intensive sustainable design, large scale urban plans, the ability to make almost any shape imaginable – but combined with a renewed call for simplicity, restraint, and human scale, and more participation by women.

Founded in 1926, Greenwich Country Day School has an enrollment of 800 students. Previous alumni of the year have included President George H.W. Bush, Frederick B. Dent, and author Peter Matthiessen.

Four diverse projects designed by Centerbrook – an art gallery in Massachusetts, a new campus for scientific research in New York, an oceanfront resort hotel in Rhode Island, and a LEED Platinum academic building in Connecticut – garnered recognition recently.

Centerbrook received a Merit Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New England for the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy Andover. The project entailed the expansion and extensive renovations of a 1931 building. The Addison is the only prominent art museum in America located on a high school campus.

AIA Connecticut bestowed a Design Award on Centerbrook for Hillside Campus at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. The new facilities consist of six laboratory buildings that expand by 40 percent the institution’s capacity to conduct research in the areas of cancer, neuroscience, human genetics, and quantitative biology.

Eco-Structure Magazine presented an Evergreen Award to Centerbrook and Hopkins Architects of London for their design of Kroon Hall, the new home for the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The LEED Platinum building also was selected recently as one of 16 international projects featured in Architype Review’s Sustainability Issue. It was the 16th design award that the two firms have earned for Kroon.

Centerbrook’s design of the Ocean House hotel in Watch Hill, Rhode Island captured a Grand Award from Builder Magazine as well as an Honor Award from the Association of General Contractors of Massachusetts. The project entailed the faithful and painstaking replication of a Victorian building as well as the addition of two wings to accommodate myriad modern amenities.

Centerbrook has received 343 design awards all told.

With the goal of helping young men become leaders and innovators in a world destined to move beyond fossil fuels, South Kent School and Centerbrook Architects have accepted the Living Building Challenge (LBC): to establish an environmental campus that is totally heated and powered by the sun, grows enough food – year round and onsite – to feed the entire academic community, consumes no externally sourced water, and causes zero pollution.

South Kent’s Center for Innovation (CFI) is designed to serve the school’s educational needs as well as accommodate as many as 300 visitors for various community events. LBC has established the most rigorous environmental criteria of any building rating system, so rigorous in fact that only three projects worldwide have received the coveted LBC certification since it was launched in 2006.

Among the elements that will give the campus no carbon footprint are:

When the CFI is generating more electricity than can be used, it will feed clean energy back to the community through a connection to the electrical grid. The only carbon combustion on campus will occur in a fireplace that occasionally burns wood, sustainably harvested on school property, to produce warmth and ambiance.

An independent high school in western Connecticut, South Kent engaged Centerbrook this summer to design the CFI to exemplify its ambitious commitment to environmental education and to serve as a working model of responsible use of natural resources. Augmenting the solar power arrays and serving as teaching tools will be onsite renewable energy generating systems, such as wind, hydro and geothermal technologies.

“The Center for Innovation is designed to provide a co-curriculum, or counterpoint, to our current course of studies, acting as a “venture campus” for the real-world applications of ideas and concepts,” said Head of School Andrew J. Vadnais. “The goal is to have students emerge as creative problem solvers – with a toolkit stocked full of 21st century survival skills.”

Bordering scenic Hatch Pond on a 128-acre addition to the existing South Kent campus, the Center for Innovation will consist of a cluster of academic buildings, organic gardens, organic orchards, a greenhouse, permaculture landscaping, husbandry facilities, and constructed wetlands for storm water treatment. The complex will support the main South Kent program, the local community, and other schools with an inter-disciplinary curriculum for science, the arts, sustainable practices, and ecology.

The first of three project phases calls for the cleanup and improvement of the former dairy farm site and the construction of two buildings. The Community Building will house a 300-seat, multi-purpose event space, visitor services, and food storage facilities; the Environmental Building will contain a science laboratory and a bio-shelter, which is a solar greenhouse that supports an indoor ecosystem. A new Technology Building, new farm buildings, and renovations to existing facilities are slated for development in future phases.

The new campus will surpass LEED Platinum certification in meeting LBC standards, whose requirements include building materials that are locally sourced, sustainably harvested or recycled, and responsibly manufactured. Appealing and innovative design, natural lighting, natural ventilation, super insulation, and respect for open space and existing natural ecosystems are also key elements of both regimens.

Centerbrook Partner Jim Childress, FAIA, is heading the design team, and Melissa Arminio, AIA and LEED AP, is the Project Manager. Centerbrook has designed 21 LEED certified or registered buildings, including two rated Platinum: Yale University’s Kroon Hall (with Hopkins Architects) and Health Care REIT’s national headquarters in Ohio (with Duket Architects). South Kent School offers college preparatory instruction to 177 boys in grades 9 through 12. Founded in 1923, its main campus is adjacent to the new Center for Innovation site.

A Centerbrook academic project that illustrates the benefits of the latest 3D design software is featured in the official training guide for Autodesk Revit 2012. The Center for Community at the University of Colorado, Boulder is among a handful of buildings featured in the book’s Architecture Project Gallery.

A description of the 320,000-square-foot Center and how it employed the virtual modeling technology is accompanied by a photograph as well as an image of the Revit-generated model depicting a cut-away section of the structure. In the Forward, Revit is described as “a way to understand a building before it [is] built, earlier and more fundamentally than ever before.”

With the capability to make major changes with relative ease, Revit was combined with related design and remote communications systems to allow Centerbrook’s architectural team, the university, consultants, and contractors to be literally on the same page – despite their far flung locations – as the virtual model of the building progressed from conceptual design to detailed construction documents.

“At times, more than a dozen people were simultaneously working remotely on the exact same 3D model, something that was unheard only a few years ago,” said Jim Childress, FAIA and Centerbrook Partner-in-Charge of the project. “We can adapt how we use Revit and other Building Information Modeling tools depending on the size and complexity of the project and how the design team is structured.”

The Center for Community opened in 2010 and houses a 900-seat Micro Restaurant complex, all 12 student services departments, and a 375-car parking garage below grade. Centerbrook was the design architect, collaborating with Davis Partnership Architects of Denver on the project. The foodservice design was done by Baker Group of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The building took just 15 months to construct.

The recently published “Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012” provides step-by-step instruction on how to apply the latest version of the design technology. It contains more than 1,100 pages.

Six Centerbrook designed projects – two residences, two academic buildings, a corporate headquarters, and a 9/11 memorial – were profiled in print and electronic media recently.

Lakewood House, nestled in a Northeast forest, was the subject of an eight-page spread in New England Home magazine and was also featured in Builder magazine as well as on GreenSource.com in a section titles “Best Green Houses”

Inhabitat.com published the LEED Platinum headquarters of Health Care REIT, Inc.. Landscape Architecture Magazine’s September issue included the Liberty 9/11 Memorial in Virginia that Centerbrook designed in an article about such memorials nationwide.

ArchDaily.com published the Esther Eastman Music Center at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut and the Center for Community at the University of Colorado, Boulder campus.

The Hartford Courant profiled a Centerbrook designed home in the greater New Haven area.