Tower Hill School, Math and Science Center

Wilmington, Delaware

Firm

Bernardon

Client

Tower Hill School

Area

25,000 sq.ft.

Total Cost

$6,180,000

Completion Date

12/2013

The Math and Science Center at Tower Hill School is a 25,000-square-foot, two-story specialized facility designed to house the upper school math and science curricula. The facility is located at a corner of the city/suburban campus and is connected to other main campus buildings.

The client desired new facilities for upper school math and science classes affording them the ability to enhance their current curricula. The program for the project included new laboratories and classrooms for math, physics, chemistry, biology, and ecology, along with facilities to support a newly created astronomy curriculum, a multi-purpose lecture hall, and connectivity to the adjacent campus buildings. The Bernardon Haber Holloway design team was charged with designing a facility that would blend well with the existing adjacent buildings, utilize low-maintenance materials and respond to a sloping corner location.

In response, the facility was designed to include six 1,500-square-foot laboratories, four math classrooms, one lecture hall and an automated observatory dome. Chemistry labs were equipped with research-level fume hoods and physics labs with a two-story drop area and structured frames for conducting experiments. Instruction rooms include floor-to-ceiling writable surfaces and Smart Boards. The use of brick exterior, windows and decorative art panels matching adjacent buildings integrate the facility into the existing campus.

A fixed budget of $7 million dollars, a sloping site and close proximity to neighborhood residences provided challenges on the project. The design team along with school administrators and the construction manager worked closely to establish and maintain the budget throughout the design and construction phases. Constant communication with residents contributed to the success of the project.