The Field School is an independent school currently serving approximately 320 students from grades six through 12. To accommodate the recent increase in its growing enrollment, the school expanded and reconfigured parts of the campus to accommodate more students and improve current facilities. The Elizabeth Meeting House is a one of three main components to the expansion and renovation project that connects all the existing buildings and additions to create a unified campus. ..

The Field School is an independent school currently serving approximately 320 students from grades six through 12. To accommodate the recent increase in its growing enrollment, the school expanded and reconfigured parts of the campus to accommodate more students and improve current facilities. The Elizabeth Meeting House is a one of three main components to the expansion and renovation project that connects all the existing buildings and additions to create a unified campus.

Keast & Hood provided structural engineering design services to cox graae + spack architects for the new 9,000-sf Elizabeth Meeting House addition – a centralized, comfortable, and flexible gathering space for students at the heart of the campus. The new space, known as the Great Room, was designed to feel like a “family room” gathering space to hold up to 500 people for performances and presentations while also being flexible enough to accommodate smaller and more intimate setting for informal group discussions and events. The two-story Great Room is flanked by art classrooms and display spaces, and administration offices and support space on the upper mezzanine level surrounding the double height gathering space.

The complex nature of the site, the numerous elevation changes and the large open interior spaces led the design team to select a combination of structural steel framing with slab on metal deck and concrete beams with one-way concrete slab. The building was supported on shallow foundations. The lateral system consisted of concrete shear walls and steel moment connections.

The structural design included a 60’ long segmental, vierendeel truss that supports an exterior gather place to the north west from the top chord and a low, green roof to the south east from the bottom chord.

CLIENT: Cox Graae + Spack Architects
LOCATION: Washington, DC

TYPE: Academic, SERVICES: Addition, Restoration, MATERIALS: Steel, SUSTAINABILITY: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Completed project photography ©cox graae + spack architects