Education

Waterville, ME – Sasaki, in partnership with Hopkins Architects, has recently completed the Harold Alfond Athletics and Recreation Center (HAARC) for Colby College in Waterville.

Hopkins Architects and Sasaki were appointed in 2015 to lead a team that included Arup, MVVA, and Consigli to deliver the 350,000sf, aspired LEED Gold facility, the largest building project in Maine at the time of construction.

The building, which opened in late 2020, includes a multi-use field house with a 200-meter track and tennis courts, ice arena, an Olympic-sized pool, a competition gymnasium for basketball and volleyball, squash courts, a strength and fitness center, and multi-purpose studios, supported by locker rooms, sports medicine facilities, and offices.

The unusual scale of the HAARC provided the opportunity to create something bold, fresh and contemporary. In contrast to sprawling and accretive campus development, the HAARC offered the benefit of a single holistic architectural vision for the five individual venues, with carefully managed relationships between the building elements and the existing

Colby College’s Harold Alfond Athletics and Recreation Center

campus and landscape.

The lobby opens up into a covered central courtyard. Envisioned as the heart of the project, the courtyard unifies the entire building around a single external space to establish a strong point of common identity and establish clear wayfinding with visual connections between and across all levels and venues. The design maximizes natural daylight and sunlight to create a series of spaces for general use and which encourage people to sit, work, reflect or socialize, as well as train and compete.

The athletics venues have been designed with a high level of transparency to maximize views in and out for spectators, athletes, recreational participants, and casual observers. Care has been taken to create intimately sized venues which deliver the required capacity while prioritizing the performative nature of sport to create an intense spectator experience with dramatic sightlines and seating in close proximity to the action.

Customizing the shape of the long span trusses to optimize the desired sport clearances, while minimizing their weight, saved cost and resources in steel and concrete foundations while providing an elegant and logical expression of longspan structure. Working closely with building envelope contractors, the team invented a bespoke fitting which allowed for individual metal panels to span twice their usual width thus reducing by 50% the required back-up steel support, as well as increasing thermal performance.

As a carbon-neutral institution, environmental sustainability was key to the college. The concept of an integrated sports facility allows for the sharing of resources which itself reduces overall building footprint and extends to the building systems, where air handling units are shared between venues and heat energy is saved, moved from ice chilling to pool heating equipment.

electrical services/ maintenance/repair fire alarm and fire suppression INTEGRATED SECURITY TELECOM + DATA NETWORKING

SMARTHOME TECHNOLOGY GENERATORS + POWER BACK-UP

The Edgerley Family Horizons Center / Photos by Rosemary Fletcher

Boston – Kaplan Construction and studioMLA Architects announced the completion of the Edgerley Family Horizons Center which will serve 225 children experiencing homelessness ranging in age from two months to five years. The center began welcoming families in April.

Horizons for Homeless Children, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of young children and their families, selected studioMLA Architects and Kaplan for the design and construction of a new 55,000sf early childhood center and headquarters at 1785 Columbus Ave. in Roxbury, Mass. The new facility consolidates three existing centers into one, allowing Horizons to serve 30% more children in a space better suited to high-quality early childhood education and programming for families working to establish stability. The Edgerley Center enables Horizons to create a social services hub and a sense of community for families experiencing homelessness.

The children’s center features two floors of indoor and outdoor space

incorporating trauma-informed design strategies. The space includes a large STEAM activity space, a children’s library and literacy center, and a gross motor recreation room. Twenty-two new classrooms ranging from infant to preschool allow Horizons to increase their capacity from 175 to 225 children.

Light-filled shared and private office space, family engagement rooms, meeting rooms, and flexible community space occupy the administrative areas. Sixteen of the 22 classrooms enjoy dedicated outdoor access to the infant and preschool playgrounds, allowing for ease of transition. Designed with the help of an occupational therapist, the two outdoor play areas totaling 10,000sf were constructed on dedicated above-ground surfaces on the second floor.

One of the biggest challenges Kaplan faced was the construction shutdown in Boston on March 18, 2020 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Kaplan worked with the City of Boston to get the renovation approved as an essential construction project, citing the emergency nature of the families that are served by Horizons. Working closely with the organization, the City of Boston, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Kaplan and its subcontractors implemented a sitespecific safety plan to comply with all COVID-19 related regulations throughout the project.

The project team members also included Jonathan Lavash Project Management, LLC, owner’s representative; Watermark Development, Inc., developer; and AHA Engineers, MEP engineer. The early childhood center and headquarters is part of a larger facility, a 211,000sf nonprofit and community hub built in 2020 and designed by studioMLA Architects and Embarc Studio.

• Experienced and qualified team • Quality materials and processes • Safe and ethical work practices

LEAD PAINT • MOLD • ASBESTOS • COVID-19