St. Albans School / Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Dec 2009

Uploaded by Nico Saieh — Filed under: Educational ,Selected , SOM, USA, Washington

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In 2006, with its centennial approaching, St. Albans School, a private boys’ school founded in 1909, decided to embark upon its first new construction project in nearly 30 years. The institution hired Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) to complete a 25,000-square-foot expansion and 30,00-square-foot of renovations to provide a student center, new classrooms, faculty offices, library and auditorium. The school, which had developed slowly over the years and did not follow a rational plan, also hoped that the architects could create a cohesive linkage between four of its existing buildings.

SOM looked to St. Albans’ context for inspiration. The school is located on Mount St. Albans, which is the highest elevation in the D.C. area, and on the grounds of the National Cathedral, which were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. The landscape architect conceived of the cathedral’s surroundings as a cathedral close, outlining a network of garden walkways that he called “pilgrim paths.” These paths guide visitors slowly up the forested hill, revealing framed views of important D.C. landmarks along the way before terminating at the cathedral.

planting plan © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

SOM developed an architectural language around the idea of Olmsted’s paths, creating a series of interior and exterior passages that rise 60 feet, joining St. Albans’ lower campus with its main entrance above. Along this route, , there are gathering areas, whether within enclosed, cantilevered volumes or open-air terrace, offering views of the surroundings and the major landmarks of the Nation’s Capitol. The new extension, at the heart of the campus, seamlessly interconnects disparate internal floor levels and external public spaces, creating better physical and visual connections to the Cathedral, enhancing views to central Washington, and improving circulation sequences. The design shuns the typical campus architecture of enclosed quads in favor of interconnectivity with the landscape.

The new building itself, known as Marriott Hall, is a three-story modernist building that also very carefully establishes a familial relationship to the neo-Gothic architecture of the existing campus. SOM accomplished this by cladding much of the exterior with a blue stone that closely resembles the Potomac stone used in the original 1909 buildings. Terraced walkways provide places for students to gather and interact on campus, an important part of the institution’s educational philosophy. They also provide direct egress from the building at multiple levels, allowing SOM to forgo fire doors and stairs.

The classrooms themselves are clad in floor-to-ceiling glass. The architects carefully controlled the daylight in the interior by installing a light shelf eight feet up the glass wall. Below that point, the glass has a ceramic frit at 30 percent density; above, the glass is clear. This mitigates glare and heat gain, while allowing full sunlight to bounce off the shelf and turn the ceiling into an indirect reflector. Fluorescent lamps atop the shelf ensure that day or night classrooms receive the same degree of illumination.

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: site plan © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: planting plan © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: plan 01 © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: plan 02 © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: plan 03 © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: plan 04 © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: plan 05 © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: roof plan © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: northeast elevation © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

: southwest elevation © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Cite:
Saieh , Nico . "St. Albans School / Skidmore, Owings & Merrill" 12 Dec 2009. ArchDaily. Accessed 09 Feb 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/43453>

Comments (16)
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scarpasez says:

Outstanding registration of context without kowtowing. Great work.

# December 12, 2009 at 09:46

Pierre Batbatian says:

i love how they mixed the old with the new, montreal should learn from them …

# December 12, 2009 at 10:30

Lgfvanderveen says:

Really great interaction between old and new! Also the use of material and landscaping is very nice!

# December 12, 2009 at 11:32

Derek says:

Agreed, they blend the old and new nicely. The exterior stone choice is what really makes it work. Nice to see that aesthetic is still timeless.

# December 12, 2009 at 14:29

Tosh says:

Good old 60s. Loads of thermal bridging, glass and concrete usually. Times when nobody really cared about anything at all. We can – we do.

# December 12, 2009 at 16:21

mycenaeanapollo says:

The idea is nice, but that will be an eyesore within a couple of decades. Hideous.

# December 12, 2009 at 22:04

joer says:

really amazing

# December 13, 2009 at 00:03

Juni says:

They usually do great job. This one is really nice.

# December 13, 2009 at 08:16

ab hlym says:

good fusion so nice

# December 14, 2009 at 04:48

kagayakitecture says:

Wow… Amazing… I adore it a lot..

# December 14, 2009 at 08:35

derustun says:

that’s gorgeous!

# December 15, 2009 at 10:54

Andrew Shenouda says:

I like the way of integrating the new with old!
I like also landscape!

# December 15, 2009 at 10:58

zbigniew says:

Have’nt you noticed they hadn’t changed thei neofunctionist approach since their debut in the sixties? its nothing new here and the game with material trying to go along with older neighbourhood is quite dull i guess.

# December 16, 2009 at 16:39

葛 says: