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An Extensive and Attractive Redevelopment of the Schools and Accompanying Community Complex. by Andrew Arbaugh, Copley Wolff
A six-acre site in the Wellington-Harrington neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the home of two schools: the King Open (elementary) School and Cambridge Street Upper (middle) School. The existing location was dominated by a low-slung 1950s building which housed the two separate schools. The campus also contained a branch of the Cambridge Public Library and a public pool complex. Landscape architectural firm Copley Wolff was selected as part of a team that accomplished an extensive and attractive redevelopment of the schools and accompanying community complex. The design team collaborated with the City of Cambridge to reconceptualize the site towards the following goals: ???,??? Replace and expand the existing school, library, and pool program while adding a headquarters for the Cambridge Public Schools, a public pre-school, and new playgrounds for the adjacent Frisoli Community Center/Head Start Pre-School ???,??? Increase the amount of on-site open space and create a green connection that extends what is known as Donnelly Field to Cambridge Street ???,??? Create what would be the largest school in Massachusetts to achieve both Net Zero Emissions and LEED v.4 Platinum certification Copley Wolff worked with the architect, civil engineer, and geothermal engineer to develop a massive and open space strategy that would accommodate the required architectural programming and produce close to an acre of additional publicly accessible open space. Initial coordination included the siting of over 200 geothermal wells on a 20' x 20' grid beneath most of the open space. The landscape architect coordinated this to ensure the grid would not come in conflict with proposed site walls, play equipment footings, trees, and rain gardens. Most importantly, the landscape architect advocated that the grid be excluded from the root zone of a major, mature sycamore on Cambridge Street. Preservation of this landmark tree became a design driver. The project team hired an arborist to provide monthly evaluations and maintenance of the sycamore (and four additional mature honey locusts that formed an all???(C)e on Willow Street) throughout the duration of the three-year construction period. Both the landscape design and architecture were coordinated to preserve the root zone and position the Sycamore at the center of the Cambridge Street landscape design. The completed project incorporates 147 new trees into a series of landscape spaces that surround and flow through the new building. The Plazas King Open Entry Plaza and Cambridge Street Upper School Plaza are landscaped entries for the two "schools within a school." They were designed to give each school its own identity. The entries to the plazas are set at elevation 23.0 to withstand a projected 100-year flood stage associated with climate change. Valente Plaza is a formal extension of the library set at a higher elevation to separate it from the adjacent school entries. This plaza includes spaces for outdoor caf???(C) tables (to be provided post-COVID) and a replacement streetside bocce court. The Library Garden is an update of the original, much-loved children's story garden at the corner of Cambridge and Berkshire. The new garden recreates the original plant palette and returns sculptural "cat benches" while integrating a major subsurface infiltration chamber.
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