NEW YORK—General contracting firm EW Howell Construction Group has completed the expansion of one K-8 private school and the buildout from the ground up of a second, both in Manhattan. The new 30,000-square-foot Harlem Academy is located in Upper Manhattan, and the revitalized Village Community School is situated in the West Village.

Prior to the construction of its permanent campus, Harlem Academy operated out of three rented storefronts for over two decades. EW Howell worked to execute the design plans of architect Perkins Eastman so that the new facility could effectively double the school’s overall enrollment. In addition to classrooms, Harlem Academy’s building features a cafeteria, entry commons, library and large outdoor playing area.

“Due to space constraints, a usual project in this market would consist of the renovation of an existing school building or an adaptive re-use of an existing property into a school building,” said EW Howell Vice President Dominic Paparo, who supervised the project. “Harlem Academy was a unique project because of the size of the project site, which allowed for a brand-new building and a ground-level play yard, a rare opportunity we don’t often see for private schools in Manhattan.”

Nel Daws, a senior associate at Perkins Eastman, called the library and reading terrace “the heart” of Harlem Academy, “visually connected to the entrance lobby, café and multi-purpose room by the adjacent double-height student commons.”

“The façade design respects the Harlem neighborhood,” said Daws. “The masonry façade is both contextual and contemporary. A sleek steel entrance canopy provides a welcoming entrance from the street.”

In addition to the Harlem Academy project, EW Howell served as construction manager for renovating and adding on to the Village Community School. As designed by Marvel Architects, the five-level, 30,000-square-foot addition necessitated below-grade excavation to make room for the new gymnasium. The school’s updated features entail a library, rooftop play yard and specialized classrooms in such disciplines as woodshop.

A “curtain wall” connects the old and new portions of the school—and also serves secondarily by fashioning a showy entrance for the redesigned Village Community School.

EW Howell was founded in 1891 and has since become one of the leading general contracting and construction management firms in New York, with offices both in Midtown and on Long Island. The firm’s previous renovation work at New York’s private schools entails jobs at the Dalton School, Brearley School, Spence School and the Hewitt School. In addition to education, the firm is known for being busy in such other construction sectors as retail, arts, institutional and healthcare.

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NEW YORK—After nearly two decades of seeking a full-time campus, the Harlem Academy has now officially opened the doors of its new home, located at 655 St. Nicholas Avenue in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Harlem. This was after the school had for years operated out of three rented storefronts, none of which were near one another.

Students started moving into the new educational facility in December, with 2022 the year the academy can stop occupying various temporary quarters around the city. The new school building entails a five-story, 29,000-square-foot facility designed by architecture firm Perkins Eastman and built by general contractor E.W. Howell.

Perkins Eastman’s design for the new academy features an extensive library facility, which the academy’s team imagines as the centerpiece of the entire school. The library will also feature flexible classrooms with ample windows to allow in as much light as possible. Furthermore, the building will have a cafeteria serving meals throughout the day, an entry commons, as well as dedicated outdoor spaces that will function for both sports and educational opportunities.

The site was chosen nearly a decade ago, partly due to its proximity to various Harlem neighborhoods and Washington Heights. The Bronx is a quick subway ride away, as are Columbia University and City College.

Harlem Academy bought the half-acre lot in Hamilton Heights following a successful fundraising campaign that brought in over $32 million to cover construction and engineering costs. The school broke ground in the summer of 2020 and required nearly a year and a half to see it to completion.

Harlem Academy, which was founded in 2004, is a private school for students from kindergarten to 8th grade. It is the only school on the island of Manhattan that specifically focuses on extending educational opportunities to students from underprivileged communities. Their graduates have gone on to study at several Ivy League schools.

“Our new permanent campus is a vibrant space that provides a learning atmosphere designed to inspire, challenge, and support our students,” Harlem Academy founder and head of school Vinny Dotoli said in a recent statement. “The move to the new building launches the next stage in our school’s evolution, allowing us to nearly double our student population and create even more robust programs. Most critically, it ensures a lasting pathway to opportunity for generations of students to come.”

Designer Perkins Eastman has also worked on renovations at New York University and another school in Manhattan called Avenues: The World School. General contractor E.W. Howell’s other Gotham-related educational projects include the Village Community School, the new PS 464 and PS / IS 419.

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BOSTON – Perkins Eastman recently joined the Boston Arts Academy Foundation, the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), and the Mayor’s Office of the City of Boston to celebrate the groundbreaking for the new Boston Arts Academy.

The project will increase the size of the building from approximately 121,000-square-feet to 153,500-square-feet, permitting greater capacity to the Boston Arts Academy.

“It has been a thrill to work with the Boston Arts Academy, Boston Public Schools, and Boston Public Facilities Department to create a project that provides the BAA with the spaces they need for their very special programs. The BAA is truly a unique environment where arts and academics are intertwined, and we have worked to design a facility that supports their process and expresses their values,” said Jana Silsby AIA, LEED AP, Perkins Eastman’s project architect.

Situated on a prominent corner across from iconic Fenway Park, the new building exists as a beacon for the neighborhood—to convey its significance as a learning community to onlookers.

This is reflected at the exterior through a series of projecting glass bay windows that showcase the activity occurring within and keep occupants constantly connected to the urban fabric. The building also includes rooftop outdoor learning and performance space.

The new five-story building will offer new and greatly enhanced performance and rehearsal spaces, including a new 500-seat theater featuring a proscenium stage, a black box theatre, dance studios, a recital hall, art gallery, music practice rooms, and visual arts and fashion technology studios and workspace. In addition to this, the building also provides common gathering and teaching spaces along with an award-winning STEAM program.

The facility will also include a gym and a health and wellness center for students.

Furthermore, the building has been designed with a range of features that are proven to improve indoor environmental quality (IEQ), with a focus on improved daylight, thermal comfort, acoustics and reduced CO2 levels to improve cognitive function.

“It’s thrilling to see this building, with its much-needed student spaces take shape and to know that it will serve future generations of passionate artists and creators,”

said Boston Arts Academy Headmaster Anne Clark.

The new $125 million facility is designed by Perkins Eastman in association with Wilson Butler Architects and is expected to be complete in 2021.

The project team also includes Lee Kennedy as the construction manager.

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — International design and architecture firm Perkins Eastman recently announced that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School in Cambridge has been certified LEED Platinum.

The 170,000-square-foot school achieved 89 points out of 110 base points possible for LEED — making it the second highest-scoring new school in the world certified under USGBC’s LEED for Schools-New Construction system, according to a press release.

Sean O’Donnell FAIA, LEED AP, Principal-in-Charge of the project and Perkins Eastman’s practice area leader for K-12 education, said that both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dunbar High School scored so highly on the LEED Platinum scale for the same reason — all of the stakeholders were committed to the vision of creating the most sustainable, highest-performance learning environments possible.

“The integrated design process with these stakeholders assured that strategies were researched and vetted in a cross-disciplinary way which made the projects successful in the full spectrum of LEED categories, said O’Donnell. “Accordingly, many opportunities and systems were optimized and integrated into the designs to achieve this level of performance.”

These ranged from proper massing and solar orientation with systems to conserve resources. These resources included the ground source heat pumps for heating and cooling, the on-demand dedicated outdoor air ventilation, extensive photo-voltaic systems, the graywater system for flushing toilets, the building envelope and light shelves to those that enhance Indoor Environmental Quality such as lighting, acoustics, as well as healthy materials, and elements that transformed what would otherwise be concealed infrastructure into opportunities.

“Most importantly, these strategies were utilized to create light-filled spaces that are quiet, comfortable, flexible, and beautiful – spaces where students and teachers can collaborate together or focus individually,” said O’Donnell.

Jana Silsby AIA, LEED AP, the project’s senior designer explained the process was different from other they have worked on, in both feasibility and schematic design phases.

“A great deal of effort went into understanding exactly how the building would be maintained and used, right down to detailed plug load information, in order to provide the best and most affordable design possible,” said Silsby. “Energy modeling and analysis was used from the beginning to inform design decisions, including an embodied carbon analysis to help determine whether to renovate the existing building or build new. While we always focus on optimizing daylight and views in the learning environment, this was the first project that we could digitally model these attributes and fine-tune the design in near real-time.”

Therefore, the classrooms are suffused with plentiful natural light and as a result are among the most beautiful that we have ever designed. Teachers evidently agree, as virtually every time we visit the building we find that they have opted to leave the lights off, preferring to enjoy the daylight.

“The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School sets a high bar for quality and environmental responsibility by achieving LEED Platinum,” said Anisa Heming, director of the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council. “Any visitor to the school can tell the care and commitment that went into its design and construction, made visible by its rooftop garden, welcoming auditorium, public art, and daylit classrooms. We commend Cambridge Public Schools, Perkins Eastman, and all of their partners for bringing this healthy, inspiring learning environment to students and delivering a school the students, parents, and teachers can be proud of.”

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“Measuring Up: Using Pre- and Post-Occupancy Evaluation to Assess High-Performance School Design” was published Aug. 28 by key designers at architecture firm Perkins Eastman, with offices in New York. The white paper highlights a design research study conducted by Perkins Eastman, using Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School, located in Cambridge, Mass., as a test case. The design team showed that the efficient design strategies used at the school showed a significant and measurable impact on both occupant satisfaction and building performance, according to a statement.

Opened in time for the 2015-16 school year, the 169,000-square-foot school was designed to achieve Net Zero Energy in an urban learning environment. The school, serving grades PreK–8, features a high-performance design that now stands as a prototype for the district as well as for other schools across the country attempting to achieve Net Zero Energy. Not only did the project incorporate sustainable features such as the use of photovoltaic panels, it also created several outdoor learning spaces, including a City Sprouts garden, outdoor hard and softscape areas, a preschool playground, teacher’s patio and a courtyard garden featuring an indoor/outdoor performance space.

The Perkins Eastman study stands out from other academic studies investigating Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) in schools in that it was designed to examine multiple, concurrent factors — producing a more holistic picture than single variables studied in isolation can provide, according to a statement. The study reported satisfaction levels increased between 53 to 66 percent in every measure, including daylight, thermal comfort, acoustics and air quality, which indicated meaningful improvement.

The study showed that even minor improvements in building performance using high-performance design strategies can significantly impact occupant satisfaction and performance.

Some of the design strategies highlighted in the study include massing to help the school fit into its residential neighborhood, an emphasis on public spaces, flexible “corridor” spaces that enhance extended learning, creating three “neighborhoods” for the different grade levels and access to nature.

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