New Arts Center, Field House to Be Built
Within the next two years, a new performing arts center will be built on the site of the current outdoor tennis courts near the gym, the Forrestal Bowld Music Building will receive a brand new addition and the Thompson Cage will earn a well-deserved retirement as a new state-of-the-art field house facility is designed to replace it. While the PEA campus might sometimes appear to change slowly, these big projects underway aim to transform not only the lives of all students, but the look and feel of the campus itself.
Exeter’s George H. Love gymnasium complex, including its adjacent tennis courts and the Thompson Cage, serves as the Academy’s athletic headquarters. Though the Thompson Cage has served students for nearly 90 years, the school deemed it no longer sufficient for Exeter’s athletic needs, and the trustees have commissioned Architectural Resources Cambridge and Harvey Construction to design and build, respectively, the new field house.
The new facility will provide greatly enhanced space for a variety of indoor athletic functions, and will include a 72,000-square-foot main level with an indoor track, spaces for long jump and pole vaulting and four indoor tennis courts. A mezzanine of 12,500 square feet will contain two wrestling venues along with a general purpose meeting room and storage spaces. The basement level will consist of a garage with 169 parking spaces for athletic and general use. Construction is due to start shortly after graduation in June, with a planned opening for the new field house in the fall of 2017.
“Fisher Theater definitely has room for improvement, and I think a lot of theater kids agree that it is super exciting to have a brand new theater in which to rehearse and perform.”
According to the Academy’s Chief of Planning and Facilities Roger Wakeman, the 200-meter indoor track will serve as a major component of the space. It will consist of six lanes around the perimeter, eight lanes for the 60-meter straightaway, and a spectator bleacher on the side of the space. “There will be plenty of natural light provided by windows with views out to the athletic fields,” Wakeman added.
The new field house will also integrate aesthetically with the remaining gym buildings and provide an attractive modern structure that transitions to the adjacent athletic fields. Wakeman said the materials used to build it will “harmonize with the tones of the existing Thompson Gym as well as the new materials to be installed for the Center for Theater and Dance[,] the new landscape areas and the Pedestrian Promenade.” Site improvements around the new field house will aim to assist pedestrian access and safety with new walks, improved lighting, an outdoor plaza with seat walls and bike storage.
Another goal for the field house project is to promote sustainability and obtain a Gold certification for Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design (LEED). Its plans incorporate energy efficient mechanical and lighting systems, environmentally friendly building materials and construction practices, high performance heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC0 systems), low volatile organic compound (low-VOC) paint, and a large solar array on the roof “capable of providing enough power to support 60 average size homes annually,” according to Wakeman.
Construction is also currently underway to transform the current outdoor tennis courts into Exeter’s new Center for Theater and Dance. The 56,000-square-foot performing arts center will incorporate a large main stage with an orchestra pit and an intimate apron stage in addition to flexible teaching, rehearsal and exploration spaces. The theater will also include areas for technical design, craft and storage and a lobby capable of hosting events. It will be designed by the husband-and-wife team of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, National Medal of Arts recipients who are known for their designs of the American Folk Art Museum in New York, as well as the LEED Platinum-certified gallery for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
Designed to serve as a gateway, the Center for Theater and Dance will connect the south side of campus, which is made up of primarily athletics, housing, fields and woods, with the north side, which contains six of Exeter’s eight academic buildings. “There’s a very strong divide today between the two halves of the campus: the academic buildings feel settled and more traditional and the athletic feel rather brutal,” Williams said. The concept of bridging the campus’ two halves “is a natural requirement of this building,” he added, but one that should not be overemphasized. “It’s important to celebrate this as a building, as a place and as an activity.”
Williams and Tsien were also mindful that the building should be welcoming not only to those who participate in the performing arts, but also to Exonians who are not involved in the theater or dance programs. To enhance the center’s welcoming character, “color will play a particular role,” Tsien said. In the design, “[Williams and her] want[ed] to make sure that when you walk in the door, or even before you walk in the door, you feel as if you’re being welcomed, in a way that makes you feel happy.” Williams added that although the building “may feel massive on the outside, it needs to feel light on the inside.” According to him, brightness will be important in capturing the “alive” spirit of the performance center.
With ambitious plans for the future, on top of these two major renovations the Academy also broke ground in May 2015 on a new 12,000-square-foot addition to the Forrestal Bowld Music Building. Roughly 50 percent of Academy students take music lessons, and one-quarter of the student body performs in the Academy’s annual holiday concert. This increased demand for music programs has made an expansion beyond the building’s original 1995 design necessary. The new addition, which will be designed by the original architectural team at William Rawn Associates of Boston, will include a Harkness classroom, more practice rooms, a music media and technology center and a musicianship studio. The centerpiece of the new addition will be the glass-windowed recital and rehearsal hall, which will seat up to 250 people.
The estimated cost for the expansion of Forrestal Bowld is 10.1 million dollars, and will include an endowment of approximately 3 million dollars to support the operation, renewal and maintenance of the structure in perpetuity. The expansion, with an expected completion by this September, will continue the Academy’s push for sustainable building design and, like the new theater, will contain LED lighting, high performance HVAC systems, low-VOC paint and sustainable products. The school year of 2015-16 has marked the start of several large-scale renovations, which have already made immediate impacts on campus.
In regards to the renovations for the theater, prep Anna Clark, who was involved in all three mainstage shows this year and has just finished stage managing the Senior Acting Ensemble, explained the usefulness of a new performing arts space. “I am ecstatic about the new theater. I think it will be incredibly helpful to support Exeter’s performing arts program. Fisher Theater definitely has room for improvement, and I think a lot of theater kids agree that it is super exciting to have a brand new theater in which to rehearse and perform,” she said.