Centerbrook is designing a new sustainable math and science building for Berkshire School, a private boarding school located in the shadow of Mount Everett, the second highest peak in Massachusetts. Berkshire has long cultivated attention to the world around it, using its campus and woodlands ecologies as outdoor classrooms. Slated for LEED Silver, it will be the school’s flagship sustainable building, embodying its commitment to the environment with a variety of energy reducing strategies, and careful stewardship of the site.
Centerbrook’s new building respects Berkshire School’s history and the prominence of its site, which is located in the heart of the campus on a knoll overlooking a central open space, “Buck Valley,” named for the school’s founder, Seaver Buck. It will be sided in stucco and roofed in slate, like most of Berkshire’s major buildings. Part of the site currently contains Memorial Hall, commemorating Berkshire alumni who died during World War I. Though the building has outlived its usefulness, elements including wooden commemorative panels, will be incorporated in the new facility. The building moves closer to the center of Buck Valley than Memorial to make way for a new ring road. The road diverts vehicles from campus center and better defines the quadrangle, making it more vivid as a “living room” for the school.
The building will contain chemistry, biology, physics and environmental labs, a lecture hall, breakout study nooks and display areas along the main hallway, a reading room, faculty office clusters, a math lab, and math classrooms. All classrooms will be on display through interior windows.
The building is organized as a simple, slightly bent rectangle with east facing corridors and a glassy two-story lobby that leads to all parts. This fills the classrooms and lobby with natural light and maximizes views of the valley and mountains. Labs are efficiently paired and stacked in the large wing. Math classrooms, which are smaller, are tucked under large window-filled dormers on the third floor. Special project classrooms are on the first floor with windows along the halls to show off the exciting activity within. Entries at the ends of the building and on each side of the lobby allow students to escape the cold Berkshire winds during the winter as they walk between classes.
The courtyard to the west, facing Mount Everett, is a sun trap, designed with landscaped ‘test plots’ for environmental studies. The courtyard to the east, facing Buck Valley, gathers heavily traveled walkways and participates in the life of the campus through cascading walls and steps leading to the dining hall across the valley.
Renderings © Centerbrook