PROJECTS

BACKGROUND

Located in Concord, MA, The Umbrella Arts Center began as a small community of local artists working in the town's former high school building. Today, it is a thriving arts hub serving surrounding communities and offering a wide range of programs for all ages.

Working on projects like this one is rare. With its deep community roots and lasting civic impact, this project remains one of our favorite experiences.


PROGRAM

Renovation of 31.200 SF. Existing Building
Full Accessibility Upgrades
Addition of a new 26,200 SF. Wing
New Central Exhibition Gallery
New Professional Theater & Black Box
Flexible Dance and Instruction Classrooms
New Administration Offices

The new Lower School & Learning Center project fully replaced an existing Lower School building complex at the heart of the school's campus. The new building expanded classroom space for grades K-5 and added new educational spaces, including a new Learning Commons, a Makerspace, a Wood Shop, and additional administrative offices.

The building acts as a connector to three other buildings, and the design approach was grounded in creating a building with an architectural expression complementary to its context, one that would look and feel as though it had always been there.

Designed primarily for young children, decisions about scale and materiality were critical. The main entrance faces the front of the school, and a separate entrance, scaled appropriately for kindergarten students, was also provided.

Lawrence Auditorium is one of the most important buildings at the Noble and Greenough School, located at the heart of its beautiful campus. It is not only a place for lectures, music, and other educational activities but also the setting for a lasting tradition: the Morning Assembly. Every morning, the entire school community gathers here to hear words of inspiration from the Head of School and mission-driven lectures from faculty and guest speakers.

The original 600-seat auditorium had limited stage space and required additional seating capacity. The design solution increased seating capacity through an expanded rear rake, made the building fully accessible, and updated its theatrical lighting and audiovisual technology. An enlarged control room now doubles as a teaching space.

The Ethel Walker School is an independent school with a long tradition of excellence in the Northeastern United States. Its mission is to empower girls and young women to pursue their passions with integrity, courage, and a love of wisdom.

To commemorate its first 100 years, The Ethel Walker School commissioned the design and construction of The Centennial Center, a new athletic and wellness building designed to provide the student community with a place for gathering, wellness, and state-of-the-art sports amenities.

The Monroe C. Gutman Library is located at the core of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. The original building was designed in 1972 in the Brutalist style and has an articulated exposed-concrete façade on the upper levels and a lighter, transparent first floor offering interesting visual connections to the street.

The program included the renovation of the second floor to seamlessly connect it to the first floor, which had been renovated in previous years. As the library's use was shifting from book storage to a more open, social learning space, the design reorganized the layout and added an open second-floor lobby; new flexible spaces for study and research; student services and administrative offices; and a Special Collections room.

The final design solution introduced a lighter palette of finishes and organized the spaces to flow naturally and connect visually to exterior views and daylight.

The final design redefines how the library functions and how it will serve the school community into the future as learning environments and technologies continue to change.

Located in the basement of Spangler Hall at Harvard Business School, this project replaced an existing space with a new tiered auditorium with a capacity of 200 seats and state-of-the-art audiovisual technology. The space was designed for graduate instruction and executive education programs.

The design uses the ceiling plane as an architectural organizing tool through a series of flowing ceiling surfaces (petals) that define the character of each seating tier. Each petal integrates the lighting, audiovisual, and mechanical systems serving the room.

Following a new full campus master plan, the scope of this project included three new ground-up buildings: a new +/-50,000 SF community and visitor welcome center (The Hub), a new 174,000 SF office and laboratory building, and a new parking garage with a capacity of 600 cars.

The community Hub serves as the main campus entrance for visitors, and connects to the rest of the campus through pedestrian bridges. It houses meeting spaces, an all-hands forum space with a capacity of 750 employees, a café and dining space for 2,000 employees, and miscellaneous amenities, including a gym and roof deck.

The new three-story office and laboratory building is organized around workstation neighborhoods connected through open collaboration zones filled with daylight and a variety of amenities.

The exterior façade is composed of three gently curved forms wrapped with wood-textured vertical fins that control sunlight and give the building a soft visual character.