Cambridge, MA – HMFH Architects received the 2009 Brick in Architecture Bronze Award in the educational category for its design of the Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill.
Located on a 16-acre private school campus in suburban Boston, the 30,000sf arts center is a three-story addition to the school’s main academic building. The addition features a black box theater with flexible seating and theatrical lighting, along with support spaces that include a scene shop, costume storage and workroom, lighting storage, control room, and green room. Three floors of classrooms wrap around two sides of the black box with drama on the main level, music on the lower level, and visual arts on the upper level.
Clay brick was selected to reflect the predominant brick vocabulary on campus, with the fine detail of smaller-scale neighboring houses. To announce and separate the arrival sequence, the building’s largest volume, the black box theater, is articulated as the primary building form. The 50-foot cube is clad in a lively brick-patterned form and is placed at an angle to engage both the bridge entry and traditionally designed classroom wing.
“Specifying clay brick for the project underscores the school’s commitment to sustainable design and high performance materials”, said George Metzger, AIA, president of HMFH Architects. “We wanted to relate to the existing building’s traditional brick exterior, but also to use the traditional material in a new way to express the school’s commitment to creative arts on the campus.”
Brick was chosen to complement the original 1920s “fresh air” style brick building to which the arts addition is linked. Two types of brick recall the stone foundation wall with brick above at the original campus building. The brick cube of the black box is embraced by the more conventional classroom wings, which establish a public edge to the campus. In contrast, the prominence of the black box theater as a centerpiece of the addition is expressed by its distinctive and elaborate brick pattern, comprised of three different brick types in an intricate bas-relief grid. This brick work continues around to the black box theater’s two-story entry wall in the lobby, which doubles as a reception and gallery space.
