Project Description
The teenage students at Brewster Academy, a boarding school overlooking New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee, needed a place where they could just hang out. But they also needed flexible classrooms, a black box theater, music and dance practice rooms, and small group study spaces. In December 2021, Concord, Mass.-based architecture firm Dewing Schmid Kearns Architects + Planners gave them all they were looking for, and more, with its design for the Grayson Student Center: a 19,800-square-foot multipurpose building that reinvents a former gymnasium on the verdant, 80-acre campus.
Neighboring the athletic field, the gym—a brick structure built in 1954—had been serving as an ill-suited theater and rehearsal space. Now, students pass through the transformed building’s doors into a 3,500-square-foot social space with movable furniture, plus a café with an 800-square-foot commercial teaching kitchen. The center’s first level also includes classrooms, breakout spaces, and a music practice room—all designed to be reconfigured for various uses. Meanwhile, a pair of staircases leads to a new, more than 7,000-square-foot mezzanine level, home to an equally versatile black box theater and dance studio. “We imagine that upper level as the mountain of the project,” says Andy Smith, AIA, a senior project manager at DSK.
With the mezzanine in place, outfitted with a metal scrim railing and skybridge over the common area, the material choices for the building’s interior become clear. Locally sourced oak flooring and terrazzo tile celebrate the natural resources of the Granite State, while vistas of the water and sky through the windows—which the team extended to ceiling height—help “bring together all the elements of nature into one continuous space,” Smith says.
Though the building’s interior and roof are new, the exterior was largely restored, contributing to a more sustainable design solution. “The building has great bones” so an adaptive reuse strategy was the right fit, Smith says. The red brick walls were repointed, and because they are nearly 2 feet thick, the firm retrofitted them with a vapor barrier system and recycled fiberglass insulation, raising the structure’s thermal performance. Exterior louvers cover windows to help mitigate solar gain, and a modern electric boiler replaces a diesel-powered one. Overall, according to DSK, the redesign reduces the building’s electricity usage by 8.5%, fuel usage by 70%, carbon emissions by 62.5%, and energy-use intensity by 72.6%.
Creating this adaptable space for studying, teaching, noshing, and performing allows for spontaneous meetings between students, and gives them a noisy spot to gather that’s distinctive from the library. DSK began working with the school in 2017 on a master plan to create more concentrated places to connect on its expansive grounds, and the Grayson Center is a first step in that effort. A recently completed second phase added an art studio, media labs, a darkroom, and music practice rooms to the center’s basement, and the third phase will create a rooftop terrace, a robotics lab, and a ceramics studio. “The concept of this project is a celebration of New Hampshire,” Smith says. For the lucky kids who attend Brewster Academy, it’s more than that—it’s a new home away from home.
PROJECT CREDITS
Project: Grayson Student Center at Brewster Academy, Wolfeboro, N.H.
Architect: Dewing Schmid Kearns Architects + Planners, Concord, Mass. Thomas D. Kearns, FAIA (president); Andy Smith, AIA (senior project manager)
Interior Designer: Dewing Schmid Kearns Architects + Planners. Sara Lesher, Hannah Fuller
Mechanical Engineer: Rist-Frost-Shumway Engineering, P.C.
Structural Engineer: Rist-Frost-Shumway Engineering, P.C.
Electrical Engineer: Rist-Frost-Shumway Engineering, P.C.
Civil Engineer: Rist-Frost-Shumway Engineering, P.C.
Construction Manager: Harvey Construction Corp.
Landscape Architect: Klopfer Martin Design Group
Lighting Designer: Vector Lighting Design
Planning: Dewing Schmid Kearns Architects + Planners
Theater Design: Martin Vinik Planning for the Arts
Food Service Design: RealFood Hospitality
Audio Visual: High Output, Inc.
Flooring: Kaswell Flooring Systems
MATERIALS AND SOURCES
Acoustical System: Sonaspray; Wall Blokker
Bathroom Fixtures: American Standard
Cabinets: Custom millwork; WilsonArt PLAM veneer
Ceilings: Armstrong; 9wood; Arktura
Countertops: WilsonArt
Exterior Wall Systems: Kawneer; Levolux
Flooring: Kaswell Flooring
Furniture: Allermuir; Wenger; Bernhardt Design; Versteel; Emeco; Vermont Farm Table; Nevins; ERG International
Glass: Vitro Architectural Glass
Gypsum: Georgia-Pacific
Insulation: Knauf; Pro Clima
Kitchen fixtures: Commercial kitchen appliances and fixtures
Lighting Control Systems: Wattstopper
Lighting: Tivoli; Traxon; Acuity; Fluxwerx; Axis; Eureka; Hemera; OCL; Tech; Gotham; Acolyte; Elliptipar; LSI
Metal: MOZ Designs
Paints: Benjamin Moore
Roofing: Carlisle
Site and Landscape Products: Native and drought-tolerant plantings; local granite pavers
Wallcoverings: Egan Working Walls acoustical panels
Windows and Doors: White oak veneer solid core doors; Kawneer 500 storefront doors
This article first appeared in the April 2023 issue of ARCHITECT.