Campus & School

We provide a wide range of specialized design and planning services suited to meet the specific needs of each campus assignment we are involved with - no matter how large or small. Our firm is expert at designing contextual solutions, skillfully conceived, to improve anything from modest portions of an existing building, to reshaping key areas of an established campus.

Our cooperative design approach produces appropriate, inventive designs that honor the spirit and customs rooted in each campus we've been fortunate to work on. We are able to design in a range of vocabularies, appropriate to the particulars of each project to satisfy the client's preferences. While striving to deliver aesthetically beautiful work, we press to understand and solve the many practical and functional concerns distinct to each project.

With decades of experience in designing campus projects, we work with a clear understanding of academic campus culture, where exploring the possible through open dialog and shared decisions ensures successful outcomes.

Steinbright Arts & Recreation Center

Plymouth Meeting Friends School

After working closely with PMFS to complete a master plan and feasibility study of their 15 acre campus, we designed two new buildings for this private, Pre-K through 6th grade school, located in a designated historic district.

The larger building is a multi-purpose center, modeled after traditional New England connected barns, that comfortably accommodates performing arts, athletics, educational programs, and a variety of community events. The art building offers a spacious painting studio, crafts area, and ceramics workshop. Our award-winning site plan design includes a number of inviting features such as an outdoor classroom with rustic fieldstone walls and an assortment of landscaped beds with specimen plantings.

Bomberger Memorial Hall

Ursinus College

Originally constructed in 1892, Bomberger Hall is the College's earliest significant building and a sentimental favorite that distinguishes the center of Ursinus' beautiful campus. Our firm worked closely with faculty and staff to program and design this extensive renovation and expansion project.

New, carefully planned layouts have completely reconfigured 40,000 square feet of space and have updated all five levels to include offices, classrooms, program centers, music rooms, and performance space. Special emphasis was given to expand and upgrade the elegant auditorium to contain 550 seats while also introducing new systems, lighting, acoustical treatments and finishes throughout. Our one-story addition provides for a new, more favorably located main lobby with an accessible entrance terrace and landscaped courtyard linked to Ursinus' scenic campus walkways.

Student & Faculty Residences

Haverford College

We prepared renovation and expansion plans for each of these six residences halls, in a phased project to create updated, comfortable living quarters for students and faculty. Located on individual sites, both in the center of campus and along its edges, each of these handsome structures vary architecturally and provide an assortment of housing options ranging from themed houses and apartments to individual room and suite accommodations. All six residence halls received extensive renovations that introduced new life safety systems, mechanical and electrical systems, plan modifications and mostly new surfaces throughout. While respecting the best interior features in each building, our work was designed carefully to restore and preserve distinctive, original details and elements.

Twenty Years With
Ursinus College

Collegeville, PA

For over 20 years our firm has provided multi-disciplinary design services to Ursinus for a wide range of interesting projects. From arriving at imaginative planning studies, to partnering on practical solutions to deferred maintenance concerns, to designing adaptive re-use and renovation projects, we've been fortunate to assist with the fine stewardship of Ursinus' distinctive campus for two decades.

Completed in an open-ended, rapid delivery method, the assortment of assignments illustrated below shows the versatile range of services we are able to provide for many types of modestly scaled campus projects. We are experienced working in tight timeframes demanded by academic calendars and also in protracted, incremental approaches. Please view our work on Bomberger Hall and various planning studies for Ursinus, represented elsewhere in this section of out website.

Corson Hall

Originally constructed in the 1950's, Corson is a three story, 23,000 square foot administrative hub that also serves as Ursinus' campus welcome center. Designed over a four-year span and accomplished with phased construction, we thoroughly reconfigured and updated the building to suit the College's demanding space needs.

Our overall renovation plan included major layout modifications, new accessible bathrooms, entirely new finishes, lighting, electrical and mechanical systems. The most noticeable phase involved a complete 7,500 square foot redesign of the ground floor to house College Admissions, Main Lobby, Academic Affairs, and financial services. This cluster of spaces features handsomely detailed woodwork, built-in cabinetry, decorative coved ceilings and all new furnishings.

Residential Village

We provided full architectural services for the extension of Ursinus College’s award-winning Residential Village with renovation and addition plans for six large, historic homes. Originally built as private residences, the College asked us to convert and expand these attractive homes to suit a variety of campus functions that included the President's home, Special Interest Housing, and distinctive student residence halls. Our renovation and addition plans included restoring the exteriors and selectively preserving historic interior details unique to each house. The additions were thoughtfully designed to be compatible with the style of each building, and all new layouts were drawn to comply with life safety codes and accommodate energy efficient systems. Complete interior renovations to each included: new bathrooms, new kitchens, major plan modifications, entirely new finishes, lighting, electrical and mechanical systems.

Ritter Hall

Approximately 20,000 square feet, Ritter is a versatile academic center that contains teaching, media and office space. Over the years, unrelated piecemeal renovations eventually became confused, inflexible layouts that were unsuitable for current-day programming. After surveying and evaluating the entire building, we worked closely with the College to design new renovation plans that could be achieved through phased construction. Key accomplishments of our plans feature: the removal of a 5,000 sf theater, which was replaced with new structural floor decks to add labs and classrooms; a new elevator and code compliant bathrooms to make the building universally accessible; and a major redesign of the deficient previous plan to create coherent, efficient clusters of space, organized to satisfy departmental needs.

Beardwood, Paisley & Stauffer Residence Hall

We completed pre-design and planning services focused on space optimization and major mechanical updating for this 60,000 square foot residence hall, originally constructed in 1957. After full survey and evaluation of all interior spaces, we created accurate digital drawings of the whole building to aid in our space usage and planning studies. The study included developing options to "mine" new program space from under-utilized areas with efficient plan change suggestions. Special emphasis was given to develop schemes to integrate new mechanical distribution harmoniously within existing spaces and to design concealment strategies for sizable primary equipment.

Master Plans & Feasibility Studies

Swarthmore College - New Campus Post Office

This design and feasibility study involved programming functional needs, identifying space requirements and developing a relocation plan for the College’s existing campus post office. Various site plan options were produced and refined to arrive at a highly desirable solution, which will be located just steps away from Swarthmore’s main student activity and dining centers. Concepts and alternatives were developed to knit the new facility compatibly into its unique context along with offering floor plans to satisfy a multitude of functional and space needs. The preferred design centers on restoring, repurposing and adding to one of Swarthmore’s classic Collegiate Gothic style stone structures originally built in the 1920’s.

An new addition will offer plenty of space to satisfy high-volume mail deliveries, package receiving, storage, and sorting space adjacent to a multi-bay truck dock with expanded apron to handle numerous daily deliveries. As well, part of this study focused on an existing conditions assessment with rehabilitation recommendations and comparative cost estimates to restore the existing building. Also included was a complete project cost estimate covering all renovation, new addition construction, and site construction scopes. Essential engineering components were addressed and initial solutions for each were included.

Swarthmore College Maintenance Assessment Study

Swarthmore College has approximately 1.7 million square feet of building space and miles of utility infrastructure, all requiring constant maintenance and renewal. These campus assets require on-going, significant financial investment to ensure proper upkeep and performance. Similar to its peer institutions, the College continues to accumulate a considerable backlog of deferred maintenance despite addressing the most pressing ones on an annual basis.

Our extensive campus-wide study began with evaluating previous assessment studies centered on life-cycle expectations. Next steps involved analyzing each building and component in detail to provide roadmaps for future deferred maintenance initiatives.

Key objectives achieved in the study consist of:

(1) Assemble a comprehensive list of deferred maintenance for each building or system in the study.

(2) Provide an estimated value of the College’s accumulated deferred maintenance backlog.

(3) Identify opportunities for qualitative space improvements within deferred maintenance projects.

(4) Develop a framework to address accumulated deferred maintenance backlog along with funding strategy and a preliminary work plan.

Working closely with all campus constituents, our study provides data and recommendations with best-methods to satisfy the College’s long-range deferred maintenance goals. Detailed scopes and cost data were produced, from which individual tasks and multi-faceted work packages are bundled to ensure the most economical and efficient use of resources.

William Penn Charter School Squash Courts - Feasibility Study

We prepared an in-depth feasibility and design study for a new squash center that was intended to be joined atop a one-story portion of Penn Charter’s existing field house. We recommended a “stacking” concept in response to restricted building site possibilities within the School’s dense campus core. This design would have provided six glass-backed, international-regulation courts with a new elevator lobby, coaches’ offices, and a viewing gallery. Our plan closely linked the squash functions with numerous amenities and support spaces already available to be shared in the field house. New, handsome masonry facades on the proposed addition were designed to upgrade and transform the plain, existing ones and relate the field house more compatibly with Penn Charter’s beautiful, stone buildings.

Plymouth Meeting Friends School Master Plan & Feasibility Study

Our firm prepared an in-depth master plan and feasibility study for this Pre-K through 6th grade private school which is located on a beautifully wooded, 15 acre site. The school’s campus core is arranged around their classic stone Meeting House, originally constructed in 1708, and the entire campus is set within a designated historic district. We worked closely with the School to assess future space needs, identify new building sites, and design a campus expansion plan which preserves the rustic charm and historic character of this wonderful property.

This project was selected for a land use and planning award by the Montgomery County Planning Commission in its annual design awards program, whose jury cited our work as “a wonderful example of how to effectively integrate new buildings into a historic setting while retaining the integrity of its site.”

Ursinus College Admissions & Welcome Center Feasibility Study

Our firm completed an in-depth feasibility study for the design of a new college admissions house and welcome center. Within the process, we evaluated and developed conversion concepts for three existing large homes, all located within the main campus "hub". Each of the architecturally unique homes had been occupied to suit a variety of College uses: from the campus health center, to offices for student activity groups.

After closely analyzing the existing conditions and constraints inherent to each structure, we interviewed administrators and key staff members in order to develop initial planning criteria and a program. With clear understanding of the College’s goals, we then developed detailed renovation and expansion designs for each. Lounges, offices, interview rooms, meeting rooms and the like, were all fused into accessible, code-compliant configurations that respected the architectural character of each house. Site work, utilities and new systems were all factored into the study in order to define the scope and potential construction costs relative to converting each of the houses.

Ursinus College Campus Meeting Center - Feasibility Study

The Campus Meeting Center feasibility study examined the potential of expanding and converting an existing 2-story, college-owned residence into a campus meeting center to host seminars, exhibits and social events. The proposed design featured a conference hall addition, a new main entrance and reception, all new HVAC and electrical systems throughout, a sculpture terrace, landscaping, and a new campus access drive.