The Forman School is an independent school renowned for its use of curriculum rooted in metacognition, teaching students ways to approach learning, working, and thinking about problem-solving. Prior to engaging the campus planning team, the school had acquired some new parcels to the north, placing new pressure and amplifying adjacent conflicts with some of the programmatic uses. BDG worked with DRA architects to reorient the campus plan to establish a residential life quad, and a formal academic quad, while strengthening and enhancing pedestrian connections from campus to the forest and brook. The campus worked at the overall scale, reorienting vehicular circulation to minimize conflicts, and the smaller interpersonal scale using the landscape to mitigate sound reverberations across the existing quad,, ,build in transitions from inside to out, forming spaces through principles of prospect and refuge, and eliminating winter safety risks by pulling sidewalks away from the front faces of buildings where snowfall could be hazardous. The campus plan, emboldens the school’s connection to nature, and uses various types of landscape spaces as a refuge, a gradient from open lawn to woods, where students and facility to immerse themselves in depending on their needs. The campus plan built in transitional spaces that connected the more ordered and scripted site elements like patios and plazas towards trails and spaces overlooking streams and ponds.

ARCHITECT: DRA Architects