Architects Make Presentation to Mount Greylock Building Committee
 Representatives from architecture firm Design Partnership reviewed aspects of the current Mount Greylock Regional School on Thursday. |
"One of the things we're sensitive to is that teaching and learning as it happens now can continue while providing flexibility for the future," architect Robert Bell of Design Partnership of Cambridge said on Thursday evening. "In no way do we anticipate it will be entirely new and foreign to the educators."
"Part of the flexibility is that you can continue to use it as it's used now," Bell's colleague David Stephen added.
"Flexibility" came up a lot during the presentation by Bell, Stephen and Design Partnership architects Dan Colli and Joe Drown.
The quartet gave a PowerPoint presentation for the Mount Greylock Building Committee and the public, outlining the issues the firm will study during the Massachusetts School Building Authority-mandated feasibility study.
The study is designed to develop options to address issues at the 60-year-old junior-senior high school, which school officials say is too large and too costly to operate.
Design Partnership supported the latter point on Thursday night.
Colli said the architects looked at the school's current facility as part of its preparation for its preselection interview and determined that the structure has an average weighted R-value of 2.67. A major renovation of the building could raise that number to 12.67, based on the firm's initial calculations, he said.
"Right now, you're averaging $1.75 per square foot for utilities," Colli said. "[Insulation and new mechanicals] would bring you down to $1 or less per square foot."
Another measure of the building's inefficiency: its "energy use intensity," which measures energy use as a function of size. Currently, Mount Greylock's EUI is 75, Colli said.
"We would target 35," he said.
Greater efficiencies could be achieved either with a new building or a major renovation, the architects implied.
Ultimately, the Building Committee — and the voters of Lanesborough and Williamstown — will have three options on the table: a base repair (which will bring the building up to code), a renovation (which would address issues like the HVAC and, possibly, reducing the footprint) and a rebuild.
Bell said Design Partnerships has no preconceived notions about which option will be best for Mount Greylock.
"We have been in business for more than 30 years designing schools," he said, noting that the Cambridge firm has worked on 125 school projects. "Seventy-five percent of those were renovations and additions. We will look seriously at add/reno."
While it is unknown where the process will lead, it is clear that the MSBA-dictated timetable will keep the process moving quickly.
Design Partnership has a June 11 deadline to submit the project's "preliminary design program" to MSBA. The Building Committee projects the entire project will be ready for a decision by the state authority by Jan. 27, 2016, with a vote by the district's member towns soon to follow — either at special town meetings or (if the MSBA waves a 120-day deadline), the 2016 annual town meetings in Williamstown (May) and Lanesborough (June).
To keep that process on track, the Building Committee will meet twice in April, once in May, once in June, and twice in July, unless other meetings need to be added to the schedule, Chairman Mark Schiek said.
The April 16 meeting at 5:30 p.m. will be followed by a 7 p.m. public hearing to collect input from residents about educational goals in a new or renovated school.
Throughout the feasibility study, there will be opportunities for public input, the architects said.
"It's important to talk to both towns, both communities," Drown said. "We want to understand what the issues are from multiple perspectives. ... We are lucky. We have the good fortune to design schools on a daily basis, but this is a wonderful opportunity for people in both towns to participate.
"The early phase is designed to be inclusive."
Among the issues to consider is how the building complements the educational program of the school.
That is the specialty of Stephen, the lone presenter who is not an employee of Design Partnership but instead a subcontractor. Stephen is the founder of New Vista Designs for Learning, based in Jamaica Plain
He also is a former teacher and school administrator, he told the Building Committee.
Stephen is facilitating meetings of the Building Committee's educational programs working group to look at how form and function could interplay in a new or renovated Mount Greylock.
"We want to make decisions based on your educational goals and guiding principles," Stephen said. "We all know that great programs can happen in buildings that are not very nice at all ... but what can we do to create a building that will facilitate the kind of teaching and learning we want to have happen here?"
Bell echoed the point.
"We all probably agree that teachers make the biggest impact on students, but the environment can go a long way to supporting that impact," he said.
Tags: MGRHS, school building committee, school project,
