Troup Magnet Academy of Sciences

New Haven, ConnecticutNewman Architects LLC

2009 Exhibition of School Planning and Architecture

Troup Magnet Academy of Sciences

Main Exterior Image

Celebration of Place and RenewalCommunity EnvironmentA comprehensive renovation with a new addition, this project gave the Troup School new life as a center of the neighborhood community. We celebrated the school’s original architecture while expressing a new vision of connection between education and the life of the neighborhood.

This school is in a disadvantaged area of New Haven, Connecticut, an environment challenged with levels of unemployment and crime higher than the norm in the city. In planning the school we worked with a school building advisory committee to look for ways to create linkages between the community and the resources of the school. Made up of teachers, administrators, parents, members of the neighborhood and community leaders, the committee met regularly with us to review and provide feedback.

Renovated Lobby with restored WPA muralsCommunity Environment: Continued…

The school design opens meeting, play, learning, and recreation spaces to the community for after school and year round use. We also designed an expanded school clinic to provide comprehensive medical services to the school population.

New Science Room created in the former LibraryLearning Environment:School buildings bring into close proximity many small groups of people doing different things that demand their focus and attention. Moreover, what happens in schools changes over time. Our approach to the design of learning environments is based on the principle that since curricula and teaching methods are always in competition and flux, places of learning should be simple, cellular, and loose-fitting.

The original school was planned as a donut of small classrooms wrapped around a large, central auditorium. While retaining the existing pattern of classrooms and corridors, the renovation turns the small 3-classroom banks into 2 classrooms to increase the flexibility of general classrooms and to permit a greater range of teaching approaches.

New Multi-purpose Teaching, Performance, and Meeting SpaceLearning Environment: Continued

The former sloped-floor auditorium is now a flat-floor multi-purpose music and drama performance space. Able to support multiple staging formats, with performance lighting both in the house and existing stage, with practice rooms, control room, and storage space provided within the spatial envelope, the resources and flexibility of the room provide the opportunity to explore a wide range of possible options for music, movement and drama. The room is also a meeting room for the community.

The library was moved from the top floor of the school to a mid-floor location to improve its accessibility to the public and the students. Every teaching space is fully wired with information technology, including overhead projection. This infrastructure is designed to enable hardware to be readily updated and new systems incorporated as they are adopted across the school system.

New Addition creates a new Entry and shows the School on a new lightPhysical Environment – One of the key aspects of sustainability is the reduction of waste. By saving and renovating a dilapidated school, we demonstrated the power of drawing on the embedded energy of the existing building, re-energizing its fabric for many more generations of use. All new, high efficiency mechanical and electrical systems, insulated windows and new insulated roofs result in a building that costs less to heat and power, while doing so at with much greater effect.

We contrasted the new and old, using the new addition as a way of describing how buildings are made. On outside, we pull the brick walls from the structure to show their mass and the way they are supported. On the new interiors, systems and materials are expressed whereas in the renovated areas, plaster and ceilings contain systems in the manner of the original building.

Gymnasium Addition relates in scale to the surrounding neighborhoodPhysical Environment – ContinuedThe existing school is a large, red brick mass, set apart from its surrounding neighbors, on its own block. An imposing, but also forbidding presence, to make the school more accessible in character and responsive to its setting, we used the new addition to tell a very different story about what architecture could be. Broken into discrete brick and glass volumes, the new addition mediates between the scale of the old school and the surrounding houses.

When the original building was new, its design expressed the intention that the most of the students who passed through would go into the industries for which New Haven was known. The new addition expresses a view of a more open-ended outcome – of preparation for a world of information, connected to place but also to the imagination. Our design tries to express these views – from the past and of the present – in a spirit of pride and optimism.

Early Model StudiesPlanning Process: Narrative

The Troup School project is one of a $1 billion program for renewal of all the schools in New Haven, Connecticut, a city of approximately 120,000 people.

To carry out this comprehensive project, New Haven has developed a planning process that is intended to create schools that combine attributes that are common to all the schools and that are specialized – reflecting both particular roles within the school system and the needs and identities of the city neighborhoods in which they are located.

Design RenderingPlanning Process: Continued

The planning process works within a structure that integrates the participation of all the constituencies in each school project from faculty, to neighborhood, Board of Education, City government, and State agencies. A professional program management team coordinates the process and provides technical support and

A significant aspect of the planning process was the design standards that have developed over the course of the program. These cover the design criteria for all the building program elements, design criteria, and cost criteria. Responsibility for ensuring compliance with the standards, or securing approval for changes to the standards, was a contractual obligation of the architect.

Exhibition of School Planning and Architecture 2008 Project Data

Submitting Firm : Newman Architects, LLCProject Role ArchitectProject Contact Richard Munday, AIATitle PrincipalAddress 300 York StreetCity, State or Province, Country New Haven, CT 06511Phone 203.772.1990

Joint Partner Firm:Project RoleProject ContactTitleAddressCity, State or Province, CountryPhone

Other Firm:Project RoleProject ContactTitleAddressCity, State or Province, CountryPhone

Construction Firm:Project Role Fusco CorporationProject Contact Jeff LuzziTitle Project ManagerAddress Long Wharf Maritime Center, 555 Long Wharf Drive

Suite 14City, State or Province, Country New Haven, CT 06511Phone 203.777.7451

Exhibition of School Planning and Architecture 2008 Project Details

Project Name Troup Magnet Academy of Sciences

City  New Haven

State Connecticut

District Name New Haven?

Supt/President  

Occupancy Date  August, 2008

Grades Housed  5-8

 

Capacity(Students)  366 students

Site Size (acres) 3.72 acres

Gross Area (sq. ft.) 150,000 sf

Per Occupant(pupil) 410 sf

gross/net please indicate  

 

Design and Build?  

If yes, Total Cost:  

Includes:  

 

If no,

Site Development: Included in total

Building Construction: Included in total

Fixed Equipment:   Included in total

Other:  

 

Total:  $ 51 million