Edutopia - September 2007 - (Page 33) Best in Glass: Gensler maximized window area to offer the right setting for enlightenment. Field of Dreams: The one entirely new structure at St. Philip’s Academy is the full-size gymnasium, separate in style and material. S t. Philip’s Academy is a private K–8 school in Newark, New Jersey—by definition, outside this magazine’s usual public school territory. But certain facts make the school a success story worth studying: St. Philip’s is dedicated to serving at-risk students in Newark’s inner city, it is a meritocracy with no set financial requirement for admission, and it has just moved into an environmentally forward-looking renovation by the renowned architectural firm Gensler. Now the new home to 330 inner city students, the school is located in a 1920 building that was once a chocolate factory (back when Newark, not Hershey, Pennsylvania, was the cocoa capital of the United States). The Gensler renovation—a 55,000-square-foot facility and new 15,000-square-foot gymnasium—is a near-seamless merging of the architectural substantiality of an earlier industrial age with the light-filled, spatially fluid design of our modern era, along with the increasingly sophisticated design approaches to sustainability and efficient energy use. The old-to-new building was designed to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design criteria for sustainability. The academy, formerly housed in a much smaller building that had been a bank and an insurance company, is devoted to city students whose academic promise usually exceeds their family’s financial situation. So, when a move to a larger facility was decided on, a downtown location was essential. SEPTEMBER 2007 EDUTOPIA 33
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