The Westminster Schools Campbell Hall Renovation and Hawkins Hall Addition

Atlanta, Georgia

Firm

Ennead Architects

Client

The Westminster Schools

Area

55,000 sq.ft.

Total Cost

$29,300,000

Completion Date

08/2020

Jonathan Hillyer; The Westminster Schools

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Design Team
Ennead:
Molly McGowan (Management Partner); Tomas Rossant (Design Partner); Todd Van Varick (Project Architect); Greg Clawson (Project Architect); Minh Tran (Project Manager); Billy Erhard (Project Designer); Gary Anderson, Edward Chang, Luccas Dias, Eileen Dirks, Janice Leong, Mariel Mora Llorens, David Monnar, Nikita Payusov, Karl Pops, Mat Strack, Trevor Hollyn Taub, Ursula Trost (Team Members).
BDR Partners: Anna Forgey, Mo Nadizadeh. JE Dunn Construction (Construction Manager); Andropogon Associates (Landscape Architect); Uzun+Case, LLC (Structural Engineer); The Integral Group LLC (MPE/FP); Eberly & Associates, Inc. (Civil Engineer); Conspectus, Inc. (Specifications); Jensen Hughes, Inc. (Fire/Life Safety); Sky Design Graphics (Signage Designer); Waveguide LLC (AV/IT); KAIZEN Foodservice Planning & Design Inc. (Food Service); GeoHydro (Geotechnical Engineer)

The Westminster Schools was founded in 1951 and moved in 1953 to its 180-acre campus in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta. Between 1953 and 2000, the campus was established and enlarged with over a dozen buildings constructed to support a progressive K-12 co-educational curriculum. With no new facilities constructed since 2000, the trustees commissioned a master plan in 2015 to define a strategy to renew the campus, expand facilities, and reposition the school to respond to new educational trends and an evolved curriculum. The renovation and expansion of Campbell Hall was one of the first priorities.

Campbell Hall was constructed in the 1950s and is one of the earliest buildings at the Westminster Schools. Originally conceived as a general classroom building for the Upper School, it embodied the best practices of the times—a double-loaded corridor layout, lined with lockers, classrooms designed to be the “homeroom” of teachers, and opaque walls to ensure that teachers could properly command their charges without distraction.

Contemporary trends in education call for greater transparency in learning environments, more peer-to-peer learning opportunities, increased interdisciplinary collaboration among the faculty, and the value of faculty-student interaction outside the classroom. The renovation of Campbell Hall delivers on these paradigm shifts. It has visual transparency throughout. Teachers no longer “own” their classrooms; spaces are developed outside conventional classrooms to deliver spontaneous and productive interactions among educational stakeholders, and classrooms are configured to accommodate multiple and dynamic teaching modalities.

Hawkins Hall is a contemporary addition to Campbell Hall. As a new building, free from existing massing, structure, and history, the addition strives to optimize the innovations established in the Campbell renovation. Organized around a three-story atrium with a variety of social and study spaces arranged concentrically, the facility is meant to become the social heart of the northern Upper School campus, drawing community, staff, faculty, and students into the building. Central to the building’s organization are a new café and an experimental learning laboratory, where teachers are encouraged to experiment with different teaching methods, including project-based learning and virtual reality.

Together, the renovation of Campbell Hall and the addition of Hawkins Hall situate the Westminster Schools to adopt new pedagogical trends, raise “out-of-classroom learning” to be on par with in-classroom learning, foster greater and more nuanced faculty-student interaction, and compel faculty to try new methods of teaching and scholarship.