MERIT AWARD

The Dwight-Englewood (dwite ing-elwood) School, a leading independent college preparatory school located in Englewood, New Jersey, seeks to provide students with an experience that fosters their development into mature, knowledgeable, and energetic citizens of the 21st century. It encourages students to be aware of the issues that society faces and interested in engaging them. The school wants them to have confidence, based on their extensive academic, intellectual, physical, and socio-emotional growth, to go into the world ready to live healthy lives and become leaders in their fields. And, most importantly, Dwight-Englewood wants its students to grow as people and develop into responsible adults.

The school firmly believes that the design of their facilities has the power to create paradigm shifts in the way they deliver education. As part of this paradigm shift, they sought to reimagine the middle school experience and develop a design that would enable children to learn in a creative and meaningful way. As a part of Gensler’s decade-long master planning at The Dwight-Englewood School, the middle school creates inclusive educational opportunities that enable multiple pathways for student success.

As seen through Dwight-Englewood Middle School, the new school does not ask how it can best support the average learner, but how it can best support all learners. Rather than designing one optimal universal learning experience, it becomes imperative that schools are designed for choice, adaptability, and connectivity – providing multiple pathways to skills development that spark the joy of learning in each student.

The 12,200-square-foot Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking, located at Yale University in New Haven Connecticut, establishes a beacon for university wide interdisciplinary collaboration. The center, and submitted by WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/ Landscape/Urbanism, brings students from diverse disciplines together to create innovative solutions to real world problems. The program, unique to Yale University, is based around team workshops that allow students to bring their ideas to fruition.

The building’s unique, elliptical form is centrally positioned in a courtyard of stepped orthogonal structures. Curved transparent glass walls encourage circulation through and around the center and allow the rest of the university to see and participate in ongoing work. Indoor and outdoor connections between the center and the adjacent landscape will establish this section of the campus as a new circulation route and a new home for innovation.

Within the center, continuous sightlines throughout unite spaces of creation and critique, encouraging interdisciplinary discourse. The open studio, conference and breakout spaces create opportunities for spontaneous discussion and provide a link between public areas and adjacent instructional spaces. In keeping with Yale’s commitment to sustainability, the project replaces the current underused paved plaza with a new planted garden, significantly reducing storm runoff and encouraging activity year-round. The building and the plaza renovation have received LEED gold certification.

The combination of connectivity, sustainability and new collaborative spaces will transform the existing plaza and establish the Center for Innovative Thinking as a new interdisciplinary learning environment that cultivates innovators, leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs in all fields and for all sectors of society.

INSTITUTIONAL NASA GLENN RESEARCH CENTER | RESEARCH SUPPORT BUILDING CLEVELAND, OHIO

SUBMITTED BY: ANDREA STEELE ARCHITECTURE