Lehigh School Singleton, Hitch, and Maida Residential Houses / Sasaki
Textual content material description equipped by the architects. In 2016, Sasaki began working with Lehigh School to remodel the scholar residential experience on campus. After determining a long-term method for renovating present housing, taking outdated buildings offline, and together with functionality to assist the varsity’s growth, the varsity, and the design workforce acknowledged what was missing on campus: hangout and group look at areas and a “bridge” typology that provides additional privateness than an ordinary dormitory nevertheless additional neighborhood than apartment-style housing.
The model new residential properties current this desired home by strategically weaving collectively a typical route the place faculty college students might make connections and strengthen their residential neighborhood. The design moreover contains a cohesive method for open home that respects the historic campus character and steep topographic conditions. The buildings are sculpturally crafted all through the size of Lehigh’s typical residence halls. The material palette picks up on the campus’ prevalent Pennsylvania bluestone and metal roofs, whereas the iron spot brick alternating between clear and rusticated textures harmonizes with the iron-rich native stone used on surrounding buildings.
Designed for Connection. The campus is presently organized spherical east-west terraces with few north-south (up/downhill) connections given Lehigh’s steep topography. The model new housing difficult, comprising the South Cluster and North Cluster buildings, supplies a model new accessible public route that traverses six tales of grade change and hyperlinks collectively pupil life purposes. The design moreover opens up views and new outdoor areas that be part of the campus’s historic core to the residential hillside. The last word design effectively reconnects the residential experience to the broader coronary coronary heart of campus with a sustainable and fashionable residing ambiance.
An Constructed-in Panorama. The panorama design, together with bridging huge variations in elevation, offers energetic areas that stream from indoor pupil life venues to new outdoor leisure alternate options. The workforce studied the ecology of the encircling woodlands to fine-tune plantings and exchange the core campus’s parklike panorama to supply habitat restoration and stormwater administration. These efforts delay onto the inexperienced roofs of the buildings, connecting the entire difficult to its panorama.
Architectural Character. The central campus incorporates dramatic views and stone buildings which is likely to be expert inside the spherical. On the campus periphery, prolonged, linear residential buildings kind courtyards. The model new buildings echo the robust, prismatic varieties of the core campus whereas moreover framing new, energetic courtyards. Their varieties are impressed by the campus context of late-Nineteenth-century stone and brick laboratories and housing on a dramatic, lush mountainside panorama.
The Pupil Experience. The model new housing cluster will foster pupil wellness, with a steadiness of labor and play whereas providing neighborhood identification. Key purposes, along with faculty rooms, a well being coronary heart, a café, and multi-purpose areas assist psychological and bodily nicely being for school youngsters immersed in rigorous academic purposes. As a school with 5 colleges and numerous diploma purposes that emphasize project-based finding out — Lehigh presents an opportunity to foster an psychological life based totally on interpersonal connection.
Sustainability. Reflecting Lehigh’s spectacular historic previous as a pacesetter in science and engineering, environmental stewardship and sustainability are key parts of the neighborhood. Explicit strategies proposed embrace an built-in suite of stormwater administration parts, energy-efficient establishing packages, and a photograph voltaic hot-water demonstration system.
