The Bridge
Waring – New School Building
ABOUT
Client Waring School
Owner’s Representative Craig Douglas, AIA
Typology Institutional
Location Beverly, MA
Year 2020
Design Team Matthew O’Malia, Timothy Lock, Riley Pratt, Alexandra Pagán
Contractor L.D. Russo
Consultants Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection Engineer: VanZelm Associates; Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti; Landscape Architect: Ground; Civil Engineer: Hancock Associates
EUI 9.2 kBTU/SF/yr
AWARDS
AIA Maine, 2023 Honor Award
Passive House Network 2023 Climate Design Awards in the category Cold to Arctic
This new 12,000 square foot academic building represents a watershed in the history of Waring School, a private liberal arts middle and high school in Beverly, MA. Serving as a new campus entry point for the school’s faculty and 150 students, the building houses classrooms, informal spaces for independent study and small-group sessions, and an auditorium designed around the All-School Meeting, a daily touchstone at Waring since the school’s founding in 1972.
Meeting the Passive House standard of energy efficiency and indoor air quality, the design also addresses longstanding site-circulation and environmental challenges on the campus. The building replaces a repurposed residential structure that was plagued by periodic flooding. Sited above the flood plain, and spanning a 12-foot vertical slope, the new building provides a fully accessible path—as well as a visual and programmatic bridge—between the school’s lower and upper campuses.
While modern in form and detailing, the design reflects contextual themes in its exterior materials: stucco, like that of existing campus buildings, and vertical wood boards, which blend with the wooded site. The building’s massing stacks two single-story bars, with the upper level rotated 90 degrees to create an L-shaped footprint. The All-School Meeting space occupies the “knuckle” where the two bars overlap. A large glazed opening takes in a commanding view of the lower campus, while serving also as a beacon to those entering the campus.
