Description
Greenwich Academy is a private school for girls with a long tradition of educational excellence. Founded in 1827, the school currently occupies a 16 hectare campus in suburban Greenwich. Despite this, the scope of the project was constrained both in terms of the available site which could be built upon and also in terms of funding available. The new buildings would have to be sandwiched between topographical grades and existing buildings and built at an economical cost of 1,830 USD per square metre. The school’s requirement to create a new upper school which would somehow unify the disparate parts of the existing campus, provided an opportunity for alternative thinking about how architectural design could support learning.
The theory that student attendance and academic performance are higher the greater their daily exposure to natural light, was adopted as one of the main driving forces behind the design. New classrooms are clustered around circulation areas which are described as ‘Light Chambers’. The new library, maths/science, arts and humanities classrooms which comprise the main elements of the accommodation are organised around these light filled covered courtyards; they act as circulation and communal areas, one for each of the faculty departments. Transparent glass façades and glazed rooflights maximise daylight penetration throughout the structure. Sharon Dietzel, head of the upper school, told Architectural Record, ‘All the light has a physical and psychological effect on people; it relaxes them.’ Grassed roof terraces further integrate the building into its wooded setting and provide a subtle visual extension of the grassed areas around the new building. Strategic orientation and massing integrate the new building into the landscape, opening up views to the surrounding forest and hills. Unification of the campus was achieved through selective preservation of existing buildings.
Planted with sod and flowers, the roof also contributes to this synthesis of nature and architecture. Glazed light chambers perforate the plane of the roof, creating a dynamic sculptural environment. Students and visitors are drawn to the roof by its lush planting, its views onto the adjacent playing fields, and by its luminous light chambers, whose glass reflects the verdant horizontal rooftop plane into the interiors below.
SOM have developed a clever strategy for unifying the campus and providing the school with the new facilities it required. The green roof enhances energy efficiency and promotes environmental sustainability. It also provides effective insulation which lowers overall cooling and heating costs for the building. Altogether, the combination of thin semi-transparent glazing throughout with the heavy roof makes this a visually stunning building, giving upper school students the privilege of a distinctive and advanced form of school architecture.
Drawings
Originally published in: Mark Dudek, Schools and Kindergartens: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2015.