Institutional
Brooke Mattapan Charter School
We’re excited to announce the start of construction for the new Brooke Mattapan Charter School that will be opening in the fall of 2014. This K-8 school is an expansion of the extremely successful program that the Brooke School is currently operating in Roslindale, and the staff and students who will occupy the Mattapan site will be relocating from a temporary space elsewhere in Boston…
Engehoej Kirke
I recently visited the beautiful and striking Enghǿj Kirke (church) in the northern part of Jutland, in Denmark. The building’s minimal form and details create a space that, while much smaller, recalls the volumetric feel of a cathedral. The inverted ‘V’ shape of the structure is meant to reference the underside of a ship, an apt reference in a country where the sea is only ever 45 minutes away. While one might expect that these elements (starkness and ships) be unique to this building, they are in fact prevalent in most Danish churches. The last two photographs, from a neighboring 16th century church, clearly illustrate these similarities.
Fenway High School Senior Science Fair
Last December, Matt Rice and I spent a morning helping out as judges for the Fenway High School Senior Science Fair. It was a fun venture out of the office, a way to get involved with the community, and a great way to get to know some of the students, since Arrowstreet is currently designing a renovation and addition to their school. The science fair was held at the Museum of Science with several dozen seniors presenting their experiments. We were given a rubric and an overview of the grading, then were sent off to inquire about students’ work. While there are too many great examples to list, I specifically remember one student who studied the effect of hair coloring products on the strength of hair; a study which has some potential to be quite useful in applications outside of the classroom. I’m excited to see what next year’s seniors come up with.
Excel Academy Gala
Last week Larry Spang, George Tremblay, and I had the pleasure of attending a fund raising celebration that was put on by Excel Academy Charter Schools. Excel serves the Boston area with three individual middle schools, one of which is a recently completed Arrowstreet project. With the recent approval of their charter expansion, they also plan to open a high school in the near future…
Arrowstreet’s Work Featured in the BBJ
The Boston Business Journal honored KIPP Academy Lynn earlier this week with their Best in Real Estate award earlier this week. Here is the corresponding article.
KIPP Academy Lynn Wins BBJ Award
It was announced today that Arrowstreet’s KIPP Academy Lynn project was awarded the 2013 Boston Business Journal’s Best in Boston Real Estate Award for “Community Impact.”
The award is recognition of the fantastic impact that the KIPP program has had on the lives of its students and their families. The new facility has allowed the KIPP program to expand their middle school program and extend the experience for their students through high school, with both the middle and high schools being combined in the new building.
Congratulations to the entire project team!
Library Design at Fenway High School
We’re currently working with Fenway High School to renovate an existing school building for their program, including a sizable library. This created a challenge for us, as the existing building layout is long and narrow, with a central hallway – not ideal for a library space. Our solution was to utilize the wide hallway to create a unique cross-corridor library with a central reading room and circulation spine…
Sustainability at KIPP Academy Lynn
Earth month seems like a good point to reflect on the recently completed and now fully occupied KIPP Academy Lynn project in Lynn, MA. Part of the challenge associated with designing this project was making the school comfortable during the warmer months without the luxury of having a budget that could support full air conditioning. While oftentimes this problem is lamented, we saw it as an opportunity to be creative with the building systems and fenestration to provide low-energy, passive, and (most importantly) low-first cost climate control…
KIPP Academy Lynn Is BBJ Finalist
The Boston Business Journal will celebrate the Best in Boston Real Estate on May 23rd. KIPP Academy Lynn, a new ground up charter school we finished last year, is a finalist in the Community Impact category. Congratulations to all of the finalists, and join us at the event.