SPOTLIGHT ON SASAKI

Meet the architects hired to help advance the Brimmer campus into the future

As Brimmer works towards fulfilling the goals of our strategic plan, we have partnered with Sasaki to complete a campus master plan that will provide a roadmap for the implementation of future projects, including the conceptual design of a new Health & Wellness Center and the renovation of our existing 4th and 5th grade spaces in Cummings Hall. We reached out to the team to learn more about their work.

Can you tell us about some of Sasaki’s past projects in the education industry? How does Sasaki approach its work with schools?

Sasaki is actively engaged in shaping the campus environment for independent schools, colleges, and universities. Our work synthesizes programmatic excellence, economic and analytical rigor, resilience, community empowerment, and keen aesthetic judgment. More importantly, this work is done within the cultural context that defines each of our clients, not only as it pertains to heritage, but also as it relates to aspiration and physically advancing their missions. In other words, we work within a cultural continuum that embraces context and opens opportunities for change and evolution.

How do you incorporate a school/ institution’s strategic plan into your overall process?

We look at master plans as the physical manifestation of an institution’s strategic roadmap. Our teams strive to establish a simple but discernible link between a school’s strategic positioning and the range of places and spaces that would enable its manifestation on a daily basis. For instance, as Brimmer further emphasizes its commitment to diversity and inclusion, we look to frame the campus as a constellation of spaces that enable different activities and encourage a sense of ownership by the community at large. A similar point can be made about community: being such a central tenet of the Brimmer ethos, we believe every space – indoor or outdoor, for academics, athletics, or student life – should double as a moment for community building.

What are your views towards sustainability and green initiatives?

We think of campus and buildings as ecosystems – no one element or service can be considered without understanding how it impacts others and the system as a whole. As such, our team involves building scientists, data analysts, and sustainability experts who will collectively develop integrated ideas informing planning and conceptualization of individual projects. We connect these distinct strategies to make sure the foundations for future implementation are set in place. Potential future measures or certifications would therefore be a subset of a deeper and comprehensive set of resilient attitudes that guide projects throughout design and construction.

We approach sustainability through an integrated framework that considers carbon, energy, water, waste, ecology, mobility, health and wellness, and operations – to identify goals and ultimately strategies and recommendations that can be realized through built projects and plans.

With a new Brimmer Health & Wellness Center anchoring a larger campus-wide comprehensive plan, take us through how a massive project like this gets thought through and implemented. Who did you speak with and how do you generate community engagement?

One of the benefits of developing the Health & Wellness project in parallel with the master plan is that we were able to learn from a much broader set of constituencies as we were developing the program for the building. As a result of extensive outreach – to faculty, staff, students, parents, and alumni – we feel confident that the essence of the building is reflective of both heritage and forward-looking thinking. As an illustration of how we translate input into space, we heard a lot about the need for additional learning spaces that would be flexible enough to allow for traditional classes but that could also double as nontraditional learning, socialization, and even extended day. In addition, we capture intense interest in spaces that, above and beyond, will strengthen Brimmer’s sense of community. With that in mind, the plans were developed to provide intense connectivity with the broader campus while a large portion of the new spaces can support multiple uses.

With that strong foundation, the development of the design becomes that much more intuitive and streamlined. We moved from programming to massing, open space, and architectural character in a close dialogue with the management team and the broader community, making sure at each step that the design development remained consistent with the project’s broader aspirations.

Sasaki works with our Upper School Architecture class on a collage challenge.

What is your process for determining the most appropriate and effective smaller projects for Brimmer’s future growth?

One of our suggestions to the Brimmer community, made during our interview process, was to establish a three-pronged strategy for the design works, combining workflows for the master plan and the Health & Wellness Center with a notion of strategic initiatives addressing emerging needs. The renovations of 4th & 5th grade classrooms are a great example: the need to improve those grades’ experiences was immediate, and we took advantage of our learning acquired through the planning works to assess the opportunities and, just as importantly, make sure that the renovations would be consistent with the broader directives of the master plan. As a broader note, planning is really about creating a framework that informs implementation but also accepts changes in priorities as we move forward. It is very exciting to be in a position to see project implementation as a demonstration of the strategic thinking moving Brimmer forward.

Tell us about some of the work your team is doing this year in the Brimmer classrooms?

In addition to our focus groups and outreach via the survey, we had the pleasure of working with the Upper School Architecture class on a vision exercise. We asked the students to select a space on campus and create a collage to evoke a new vision for the experience of that space. The students used found imagery to describe, through collage, a vision for spaces such as the Dining Commons, the Ruth Corkin Theatre, the Waintrup Courtyard, and the Solarium on the second floor of the Hastings Center. It was a lot of fun for us, and we appreciated the creativity that the students brought to this challenge. We enjoyed seeing the students’ visions, many of which included copious greenery and other biophilic elements.

We plan next to engage with younger students in a similar design-vision exercise through their art class. ■

Collage by Alex Hoffman ’24.

Collage by Eli Lewis ’25.

Sasaki works with our Upper School Architecture class on a collage challenge.