All Rights Reserved BNP Media. Outwardfacing entrances (2) provide access into spaces shared with the public, such as the auditorium. For a new high school northwest of Boston, Perkins&Will has mined the past and looked to the future, reflecting the evolution of the suburb where it is located. Billerica Memorial High School will halt in-person learning, just one day after attendance fell below 75 percent. The architects conceived an L-shaped plan, with academic functions housed in one long leg, and the gym, auditorium, and arts programs in the other, with a triple-height commons as the hinge. In addition, it covers installation concerns, proper detailing of fire barriers, and the current state of joint system verification. Departments Human Resources. We do not store your personal details. September 13, 2020 Almost There... Last week we welcomed stu We partnered with the community to reimagine their educational environment and identity through the design of their largest civic building. The new Billerica Memorial High School is coming to life. It’s located in the historic Town of Billerica (just north of Boston)—a town with a long history extending back … Superintendent Timothy Piwowar sent a letter to the school … Engineers Design Group (structural); BALA Consulting Engineers (m/e); Architectural Engineers (fp/plumbing), Consultants: BILLERICA, MA — Shawmut Design and Construction, a national construction management firm, announces the opening of Billerica Memorial High School, a modern academic center designed to educate its students in an innovative, healthy and flexible environment.In collaboration with the Massachusetts School Building Authority, the town of Billerica, design firm Perkins and Will … --Students--Yearbooks Publisher Billerica Memorial High School Collection billericapubliclibrary; regionaldigitizationmass; americana Digitizing sponsor Boston Public Library Contributor Billerica Public Library Language English Volume 1976 When it came time to replace its aging high school for more than 1,600 students in grades 8–12, the town wanted to add a pre-K program and make the new facility a community center, with public access to the gymnasium, auditorium, and dining commons, among other spaces. He is also a graduate of the school. The school serves about 1,630 students in grades 8 through 12. Celebrating the new BMHS Billerica Memorial High School is a community dedicated to preparing students for life in the 21st Century. 978.528.8709 - Main Office A 2019 Billerica Memorial High School graduate and current candidate for school committee, Em addressed an issue that happened at the end of February when a local resident attending a BMHS boys basketball game posted a video of what is known as the “tomahawk chop” chant on Twitter. At first, town officials considered relocating the new Billerica Memorial High School, but decided to remain on the same 31-acre site as the old school, which also holds the town hall and the fire and police departments. Thomas Murphy is the principal of Billerica High. The Billerica Memorial High School will serve 1,620 students and accommodate grades 8-12, demanding a sensitivity to diverse age groups that share core spaces. Billerica Memorial High School. Billerica Memorial High School is a new high school constructed under the auspices of the Massachusetts School Building Authority at a cost of $172 million. Billerica schools - Billerica Memorial High School is located at 35 River Street, Billerica MA 01821. And they designed the massing of the academic bar, containing the classrooms, to ensure even light in those spaces throughout the day. At the Chicago Architecture Center, our programs and events help you think differently about the places we live, work and play. Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope, McGrory Glass, VELUX (skylights), Furnishings: By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. Transparency and daylight enliven all precincts of the school, from a triple-height commons (3) to informal study areas (4), classrooms (5), the gym (6), and interdisciplinary hubs (7). We use cookies on this site to enhance your user experience. The building’s elongated brick façade is organized by a repetitive frame expression. I want to hear from you. When the doors of Billerica Memorial High School opened on the first day of the new school year, a sense of pride permeated the halls—a palpable sense of gratitude for this physical expression of the town’s contemporary identity. Beyond architecture, she has written on a variety of subjects, including finance, food, and society and culture. Yet the old school had to operate during construction, before being razed, so the site for the new school was pushed into the southwest corner of the campus, where it connects more closely with the surrounding neighborhood. Billerica Memorial High School has been recognized in the 2020 Interior Design Association New England Chapter (IIDA New England) Design Awards, winning both the Education category and the prestigious Best in Show.Two more prestigious awards for the High School project. This site celebrates the new Billerica Memorial High School and the many players who have contributed to its success. A Look Inside: Billerica Memorial High School, New Future-Ready High School Opens in Billerica, The Transcendent Detail in Billerica Memorial High School, Three of Our Projects Win 2020 Architizer A+Awards, Billerica Memorial High School Wins Best in Show at 2020 IIDA New England Design Awards, Branded Environments Celebrates 10 Years in the Atlanta Studio, Billerica Memorial High School Featured in Architectural Record’s Schools of the 21st Century Issue. For horizontal connectivity—as well as to control costs and keep the scale sensitive to the adjacent streets of single-family houses—they limited the building to four levels, with only three above grade. ... Billerica Memorial High School. The high school serves more than 1,600 students in grades 8-12 and houses a 200-student Pre-K program. $160.5 million (project); $146.7 million (construction), Curtain Wall, Windows, Entrances: concealing a carefully integrated exhaust system that removes smoke in an emergency. Traditional red brick clads the outward-facing elevations, conveying robustness, while elaborate corbeling adds a dynamic, playful edge—expressing what schools do for kids, note the architects: give structure, but leave room for invention. UPCOMING EVENTS. The Town of Billerica quietly reinvented itself in recent years, yet their former high school—an outdated, dysfunctional facility—misrepresented the town’s true identity. Massachusetts School Building Authority, Town of Billerica, Cost: This AIA CES program deals with the life safety specifics of fire barriers, industry standards and testing. This site celebrates the new Billerica Memorial High School and the many players who have contributed to its success. Find Billerica Memorial High School test scores, student-teacher ratio, parent reviews and teacher stats. It’s rare that a single building has the power to shift the perception of an entire community—but that was exactly our opportunity in designing the new BMHS. Perkins&Will’s Boston office began by figuring out how the school’s civic and educational components could work as partners, and how various functions could be integrated as well as segregated depending on the time of day. Classroom wings support department-based teaching now, but encourage transition to interdisciplinary modalities in the future. While the structure for the academic side of the building is steel, the public wing and the commons atrium use an exposed spruce-glulam-timber structure for the roof. Founded on the town’s culture of humble pride, our design of the full suite of logos, colors, fonts, and graphics empowers the town to confidently represent itself in any setting. Contact ... full of new options, adjustments and challenges. Brick is used within this frame as a wall material containing windows of varying dimension and function by stepping, corbelling, and coursing to animate the façade. Incorporated in 1655, Billerica, Massachusetts, shifted over time from an agrarian center to a 19th-century mill town. “It has transformed the perception of the community, and makes people here aspire to do great things.”, Architect: Shawmut Design and Construction, Client: Billerica Memorial High School is in the Billerica School District. Billerica Memorial High School. Acentech (acoustics and audiovisual), General Contractor: Billerica, MA 01821. Town of Billerica - New Billerica Memorial High School (In Progress) Billerica, MA. Superintendent Tim Piwowar leads a tour of the new Billerica Memorial High School, due to open in September 2019. Anyone who walks through this building will know that the people and the educators in this town place a high value on a first-rate education for their children.". You must have JavaScript enabled to enjoy a limited number of articles over the next 30 days. Beth Broome joined Architectural Record as managing editor in 2004 after a number of years working in newspapers, most recently as managing editor of The New York Observer. Significantly, too, the town’s heritage and identity of “humble pride” are evoked through a simple, durable material language, ratcheted up a notch, imbuing the prosaic with poetry. May qualify for learning hours through most Canadian architectural associations. Billerica Memorial High School is a community dedicated to preparing students for life in the 21st Century. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. 978-528-7922. “Schools are fairly predictable as to when and how they will be used through the course of the day,” says Perkins&Will associate principal and lead designer Patrick Cunningham. Hear from students, staff, and designers about what this project means to them—and how it will shape the future of Billerica. At first, town officials considered relocating the new Billerica Memorial High School, but decided to remain on the same 31-acre site as the old school, which also holds the town hall and the fire and police departments. !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)? Daylighting also played an important role. In her current position, she oversees the day-to-day operations, planning, and production of the magazine and edits and writes on a range of projects. ), School yearbooks, Billerica (Mass.) Billerica Memorial High School (Billerica, Mass. “We were deliberate in shaking up that bag of program pieces in a way that gave the school not just a flexible building, but one that brings people of different minds together,” says Cunningham. Billerica Memorial High School released its honor roll for the first quarter of the 2020-2021 school year. We are excited to begin the school year in the NEW BMHS and welcoming the . All achieved while acoustically dampening ambient noise from the multi-story space below. Visit our updated, Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale by Weiss/Manfredi, McDonald’s Flagship by Ross Barney Architects, Wilkes Elementary School by Mahlum Architects, Scuola Colognola Ai Colli by Claudio Lucchin & Architetti Associati. Get behind-the-scenes access to the city's architectural treasures. Designed to function, in part, as a community center, the new Billerica Memorial High School can accommodate town-wide events in its gymnasium, auditorium, and dining commons. It’s a concept we’ve called reflection with direction—honoring the past, aiming for the future—and it’s woven throughout the fabric of the new building’s architecture, detailing, and branding. It is one of two public high schools in the town. Class of 2023 and 2024! Corbeled brick on the south facade takes measure of the day’s light, amplifying shadows and quietly functioning as a masonry sun dial, tracking the path of the sun. Billerica, MA. Billerica Memorial High School is a Public school that serves grade levels 9-12. South facing skylight monitors pour light downwards, Timber takes new meaning through carbon-conscious detailing; The embodied carbon in the FSC Certified spruce timber structure offsets the equivalent of a typical school bus traveling over 460,000 miles. Billerica Memorial High Schoolis ranked #4,145in the National Rankings. Today, with a population of 43,000, Billerica increasingly feeds and hosts the high-tech industry, which has spilled out across the Greater Boston area. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. The school’s neoclassical civic neighbors and late-1800s industrial context informed a design that connects distinct elements to speak a humble material language. We're an independent nonprofit that provides parents with in-depth school quality information. Billerica Memorial High School. “This project underscored how influential the placement of program can be on the culture of the school.” And not just the program, adds Trivas. By using this website, you accept cookies. Photo © Chuck Choi, click to enlarge. Acoustic, life safety and flexibility in the student commons necessitated a creatively integrated daylighting solution. The new school was built for the diverse, forward-looking educational programs Billerica takes pride in. BILLERICA, MA—The new Billerica Memorial High School is now open, a sign of the town’s reaffirmed commitment to educating its students in an innovative, healthy, and flexible environment.. There is more to an expansion joint system than just the frame and covers. A high school based on reflection with direction: honoring the past while aiming for the future. Billerica Memorial High School - BMHS Yearbook (Billerica, MA), Class of 1975, Page 92 of 208 | E-Yearbook.com has the largest online yearbook collection of college, university, high school, middle school, junior high school, military, naval cruise books … // Call epub.afterMenu callback In contrast, the inward-, north-facing elevations are clad with metallic-gray-painted metal panels, which provide reflection and a sense of depth. The walking track above the gym in the new Billerica Memorial High School. Coupled with active dimming systems for its all-LED lighting, which reduces electric lighting demand by 44 percent, these decisions help achieve a site energy use 59 percent below the regional average for the building type, say the architects. The tower nods to nearby civic structures in the historic center and serves as a memorial to those in the armed services—the original building was dedicated as a memorial high school post WWII, in 1955. For a new high school northwest of Boston, Perkins&Will has mined the past and looked to the future, reflecting the evolution of the suburb where it is located. Billerica’s new brand and visual identity are marked by “Reflection with Direction: Honoring the Past, Aiming for the Future.”. Photo © Chuck Choi. Visit our updated, This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. Type of Project: Ground-Up Duration of Project: 2 years Square footage: 325,000 sf Partners: Perkins + Will - Architect / LeftField – OPM. Billerica had quietly reinvented itself in recent years, excelling in business, robotics, drama, and athletics, so we seized the chance to design a flexible, forward-looking educational environment that matched their myriad achievements. The school is organized into small academic clusters, each with their own interdisciplinary learning space. Tell me how we can improve. (April 2014) Billerica Memorial High School (BMHS), formerly the Howe High School, is a public secondary school in the town of Billerica, Massachusetts. Corbeled red brick refers to Billerica’s past as a mill town. Kawneer, Glazing: The old school, in old-school fashion, had a tightly segregated program. Inhabiting the prosaic and poetic, the entire interior uses daylight to capture the rhythms of academic time as the sun pushes shadow through the building. 'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); }); Credits: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 IACET CEU HON, Spec, Allsteel, Hightower, KI, Steelcase. "The new Billerica Memorial High School will stand as an extraordinary vessel of learning for many future generations. Please stay informed through the follow channels of communication: BMHS Athletics Home Page. The building is on track to open in September. So, while there are still highly specialized areas, such as STEAM spaces, the architects mashed up large parts of the program: spaces flow into one another, and transparency rules. “The ability to collaborate and evolve through critical thinking is the focus of education today but was not the focus 50 years ago,” notes town manager John Curran. Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing. This language stands as a metaphor for the mission of the “maker” classroom, a part of the school’s guiding curriculum. “Everything in this building was integrated to send a message to students of their value,” she says. Community Effort, Community Space. Type of Project: Ground-Up Duration of Project: 2 years Square footage: 325,000 sf Partners: Perkins + Will - Architect / LeftField – OPM. Tweets by @ArchRecord “You can approach daylighting and form in such a way that you push light and shadow around to animate the site and building.” For example, the team envisioned students entering from the east in the morning with early light playing off the facade. Perkins&Will — Brooke Trivas, Patrick Cunningham, Jeff Brussel, Robert Brown, leadership team; Brian Spangler, Xi Liu, Christina Strid, Laura Pomarico, Jennifer Miller, Michelle Rothman, James Henry, Thomas Melville, Chen Qin, Fei Xie, Tyler Hinckley, design team; Keith Curtis, Katie Janson, branding, Engineers: “It’s been a labor of … Photos © Chuck Choi. Please click here to continue without javascript.. Chicago Architecture Center Winter Programs, Fire-Rated Expansion Joints: Employing Best Practices + Avoiding Field Problems. Inward-facing elevations of the L-shaped building are clad in metal panel (1). // End epub.afterMenu callback $(document).on('epub.afterMenu', function () { Green & White Weekly Volume 8 Issue 2 Billerica Memorial High School Preparation, Compassion, and Commitment: The Pathway to the fastest, safest, and sustained return to school. The brand new Billerica Memorial High School opened last week to its 1,599 students, and Superintendent Timothy Piwowar is all smiles. Incorporated in 1655, Billerica, Massachusetts, shifted over time from an agrarian center to a 19th-century mill town. Town of Billerica - New Billerica Memorial High School. Now Billerica wanted to make connections between disciplines within the school, as well as with the community—goals that involved careful siting of the new building, creative programming and spatial organization, and material choices. Circulation areas foster active learning; corridors connect visually with the gym and other spaces; and, importantly, flexible-classroom wings are linked to the building’s central spine via interdisciplinary hubs and labs. Originally from the Boston area, she is a graduate of Tufts University. “The materiality of this inner lining,” points out Perkins&Will principal and project leader Brooke Trivas, “allowed us to look to the future.” This same forward-looking attitude carries into the interiors with branding (in the form of the school color, logo, and slogans) and no-nonsense durable finishes like painted steel balustrades, terrazzo and rubber flooring, and latticed ash-wood ceilings and walls. You have the best experience send a message to students of their value, ” she says by closing message! Refers to Billerica ’ s elongated brick façade is organized into small academic clusters, each with their interdisciplinary... 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Have JavaScript enabled to enjoy a limited number of articles over the next 30 days you have the best.! The town grade levels 9-12 frame expression achieved while acoustically dampening ambient from. An extraordinary vessel of learning for many future generations even light in those spaces throughout the day 2020-2021 year. About the places we live, work and uses other cookies to help you think about. Billerica schools - Billerica Memorial High School is in the gymnasium, auditorium, cafeteria. Players who have contributed to its 1,599 students, staff, and designers about this. Visit our updated, this website requires certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete block! Learning for many future generations integrated daylighting solution frame expression serves about students. Including finance, food, and the many players who have contributed to its success days!