Fifth and sixth formers signed two beams to be placed in the new St. John Hall, which has recently seen major developments in its construction. The building is scheduled to open in the spring of 2017.
The construction site for the new St. John Hall Student Center has undergone drastic changes in the past few weeks as workers raised the first of three components to the steel skeleton of the building. Currently, the workers are building the second piece of the steel skeleton, which will be the in the back of the building.
According to information provided to the Communications Office by the Facilities Department, the remaining concrete foundation will be completed within three weeks. The other concrete elements, such as the steps, patios, and sidewalks, will be poured after the masonry façade is completed sometime later this summer.
Regarding the next steps for the construction, Headmaster Dr. Alex Curtis said, “The next dramatic change to the site will happen when the workers put the façade of the building up. They should start doing that before the summer.” He added, “You can see from the outline of the façade the way the back functions and where it’s connected to Hill House. It’s getting there.”
There have been no last-minute changes to the construction plans. Dr. Curtis commented, “It’s fairly easy and relatively cheap to change anything in a drawing. However, once you start getting steel in place, walls put up, and wires put in, it gets very expensive to make changes. As with the Lanphier Center, we spent a lot of time moving structures around when designing the blueprints, and we essentially said that unless something appears totally disastrous, we are not going to make changes on this project.”
As the building goes up, its architectural features will become more apparent. Dr. Curtis said, “The other Georgian buildings on campus provided a lot of influence and were inspirational for our current design. During the designing phase, we had asked ourselves, ‘What do you think George St. John might have designed there?’” George St. John was Headmaster of the Choate School when Hill House, the library, and the chapel were built. Dr. Curtis added, “This will be the fourth great building of the circle.”
He added, “When we were designing the new student center, there was this desire to create the feeling that the new student center has always been a part of that complex for a long period of time, even though it would be a modern, environmentally sustainable building.”
The new student center will have some similarities to the Lanphier Center, a recently completed building. Dr. Curtis described the two buildings, “If you look at the surface, you might say, ‘Wow, they look very different.’ However, if you dig a little bit beneath the surface, you will see that there are a lot of similarities between the buildings. Both are highly sustainable buildings. We will also be incorporating a lot of student-friendly furniture. “The school plans to apply the knowledge it learned from the construction of the Lanphier center to the construction of the new student center. “We learned a lot from the Lanphier lounge, and we will continue to learn. We will try to provide more student study rooms because of their popularity, and we have made a few changes to the café,” said Dr. Curtis.
Similar to the Lanphier Center, the new student center will be LEED-certified, the third such building on campus. LEED, or the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a program that recognizes the most environmentally sustainable building practices. In order to earn a this designation, a building project must meet certain qualifications; the designations, in order of the extent of sustainability they represent, are LEED, LEED Silver, LEED Gold, and LEED Platinum. The new student center will be LEED Gold.
Dr. Curtis remarked, “Gold is a huge challenge. It means you’ve got a building that’s highly sustainable.” He added, “The platinum level, which the KEC has achieved, is particularly difficult for a building which is on the main part of campus, because you need meet the expectations for net-zero energy efficiency.”
The target opening date for the new student center is still spring 2017. Dr. Curtis commented, “It’s a big enough project that it really takes just one major delay with supplier that doesn’t come through in a timely manner to delay the opening.” He added, “We managed to open Lanphier about six weeks earlier than scheduled. It would be asking a lot to get this project done six weeks earlier, because it has a very aggressive timeline, so while we remain hopeful that it will be next spring, we’re not certain. If there is any way to humanly get it done, we will. We have an amazing group of people that will try to get it done.”
