Education

C.E. Floyd Completes School Upgrade

Riverbend schoolhouse with the gymnasium in the background / photo by Greg Premru

Natick, MA – C.E. Floyd recently completed a new classroom building and gymnasium for Riverbend School in Natick.

The two-story wood-framed schoolhouse contains three lower elementary classrooms, design and art studios, and a director’s office. It also provides miscellaneous spaces that are adaptable for multiple purposes.

The gymnasium is a stand-alone, prefabricated metal building. It houses a full-size gym, coach’s office, bathrooms, and mechanical spaces. The prefabricated structure required extensive coordination for multiple details, such as designing the foundation to accept the structure and determining the most efficient method to tie the siding into the prefabricated exterior panels. It also required determining what can and cannot be modified on the panels.

These new buildings feature many modern amenities, but it was critical to maintain the look and feel of the John Eliot historic district. Piatt Associates Architecture incorporated features in its design to seamlessly blend in the new buildings with the existing campus and neighborhood.

The schoolhouse exterior was designed to resemble a barn with clapboard and batten siding, a metal standing seam roof, and cupola. The gym building is visually distinct, yet ties in with the schoolhouse by sharing features such as clapboard and batten siding and a metal standing seam roof.

Construction also included a 26,000sf natural turf soccer field, parking, and drop-off area with a landscaped courtyard between the schoolhouse and gym.