The Perkiomen School - Student Center

Composed of four intersecting volumes that reference the shape of the area’s historic bank barns, the center’s architecture is an amalgamation of all the different energies and activities on the campus.

There are classrooms, meeting and study rooms, art studios, media suites, teaching kitchens, bookstore, an e-gaming suite, a snack bar with a terrace facing the athletic fields at the back of the campus, and music studios adjacent to a large central atrium. Now, they can jam either privately or open their sessions to the rest of the school. While the center takes its programmatic and spatial cues from the existing school, architecturally it’s significant departure. Its white-paneled façade is coursed like the stone that makes up the foundation of many of those old bank barns, but it contrasts the red brick that abounds at the school. On the ground floor, large expanses of glass extend across the façade and sometimes wrap the corner, giving the impression that the architecture is hovering above its surroundings. On the second story, square openings punch into the white panels; from the inside, they act as picture windows, perfectly framing views of the landscape beyond. And in the middle of the atrium, a skylight formed by the ridge beams of each barn-like volume that make up the building’s overall form draws illumination deep into each of the center’s spaces, reinforcing the spirit of connection at the heart of the design.