BUILDING THE FUTURE

building for the future

For Woodstock to retain its position as a distinguished school, it would need to create a physical environment that supports our educational vision. Though full of historical character, a major part of Woodstock’s academic campus is now functionally outdated. The age of buildings combined with severe constraints on new construction in the Mussoorie area have forced us to a level of inflexibility that threatens to weaken the sense of community essential to the health of a school like ours, as well as impacting student learning. Woodstock continues to need a comprehensive strategy for development of its academic campus in the form of a phased uplift of facilities and services. This process needs to begin with the community’s evaluation of the academic campus environment with respect to its academic and strategic vision. The school’s commitment to “living responsibly” became essential when the Guiding Principles were affirmed by all stakeholder groups. From this process needs to emerge a development strategy of renovation and reuse, new construction, and landscape design that collectively create moments for spontaneous interaction, showcase Woodstock’s unique pedagogy, create habitable outdoor areas, and better reflect the school’s academic and strategic vision. This urgently needed strategy also presents a powerful opportunity to more tangibly align all campus spaces and utilities within the same vision. The initiative will require extensive renovation of available academic infrastructure, enhancement of technology and increased flexibility, with an emphasis to embody the quality, character and inclusiveness that are distinguishing features of Woodstock. However, rather than a large-scale infrastructure upgradation program that involves complexities of governmental approvals and a massive infusion of financial capital, our revised vision is to address our needs through a phased implementation plan, easing funding demands, limiting student interruption and providing a quick return on investment. We plan to achieve this outcome by upgrading the quality of our classrooms, common academic spaces, student life facilities and making investments in utility infrastructure. In summary, the renovation program would endeavour to build quality academic spaces, provide safety, promote interdisciplinary learning, integrate instruction and improve student outcomes. It should also set a precedent of restoration of the school’s attractive visual unity, while being harmonious with Woodstock’s prized natural environment. Of necessity through this extended process of renovation will be the setting of coherent, clear standards for aesthetics and all materials and equipment, so that the desired unity can be established and easily maintained.

Building for the future

This document is a restart of a planning process aimed at accurately defining the components covered under the renovation plan and creating a roadmap for us to achieve our goals. It is a working document that would be updated as these requirements become clearly articulated in consultations with our academic and student life teams, as well as with external consultants. The plan is to undertake significant due diligence in defining requirements, assessing internal capabilities, infrastructural gaps and funding options. It would be key for Woodstock to ensure that all of its stakeholders and supporters have a common understanding of the challenges we collectively face and the opportunities that lie before us.

This revised renovation strategy will cover a large portion of projects identified under the original Campus Master Plan, with the following differences:

Scope: The original CMP included significant structural changes to existing buildings. Staff housing, campus paths and security were additional domains within the CMP. Our revised plan focuses entirely on student-centric spaces, with the academic area being the highest in terms of priority.

Scale: Unlike the original CMP, the new strategy proposes a lighter approach that involves minimal structural changes to our buildings. Priorities such as the expansion of Parker Hall and Vera Marley Library would need to be re-evaluated carefully in consultation with structural engineers.

Timeframe: To minimize the probability of academic disruption, the strategy calls for a program that occurs almost “mid-flight”. The plan would address facelift of academic spaces in blocks, starting with areas that offer the least complexity in terms of schedule and location.

Collaboration: The academic team needs to be the primary stakeholder of this exercise, and we would have them take a lead role in defining what is needed. This process has already been initiated as part of our requirements definition process for new classroom spaces. The thought of a phased, smaller scale renovation plan is a fundamental shift from our previous strategy, not only since it involves a set of gradual and measured steps, but also since it provides Woodstock with full control over the scale of change. While still being capital intensive in nature, the pace of the revised plan could be calibrated depending on available funds, internal execution bandwidth and reasonable timeframes required for approvals. A controlled, phase-wise approach is proposed, allowing the team to plan and deliver results, elicit feedback and move to the next phase with a refined strategy to build something better. This new strategy allows us to apply current best practices around iterative cycles of design.