The Laurel Hill School, East Setauket New York
 

The Laurel Hill School is a top academic teaching community dedicated to educate students in a healthy nurturing environment, incorporating parents, teachers and administrators. With a campus over a ten-acres, the Laurel Hill School provides a natural setting of woods, fields, student gardens, and farms. Our creative process was fueled by the colorful surroundings, the energy and imagination of the students and faculty, and this firms commitment to sustainable architecture expressed in the format of a LEED™ Gold project and quality architecture.

The plan is to develop a one-story 5,500 square foot expansion that blends into an existing building while addressing contemporary issues of energy efficiency, sustainability and a healthy interior environment that will be beneficial to students and their learning. In addition to being a LEED™ project, The Laurel Hill School complies with the New York State Education Departments requirements.

The approach is to create a transition between the existing building and the new addition through a connecting spine that draws the inhabitants from old to new through natural light and an open space, providing progressive revelation of the new design.

The addition includes six classrooms (two of which can be joined to a single meeting room) surrounding a central hub of common spaces bathed in natural light, serving as a village center where students can meet and interact. The central common spaces are delineated by outwardly splayed walls that open to the natural light as they rise. The final effect is an interior space that defies the artificially lit double loaded corridor common to most schools. Each classroom contains an interior window seat paired with an exterior bench along the same window emphasizing the connection to the outdoors and nature.

 

The concept of the design, common to all Peter Caradonna designs is to work in harmony with the planet harnessing its energy and using only earth friendly materials, methods and products in the buildings construction, incorporated into a high quality, energy efficient building to last well through the turn of the next century.