St. Gabriel Middle School  |  Stamford, CT

Classroom and Gymnasium Multi-purpose Addition

• Scope:
• • 15,480 SF
• • New Multi-purpose Room: Gym, Cafeteria and Assembly Functions, Warming
• • 5 General Classrooms
• • 1 Music Classroom
• • 1 Art Classroom
• • New School Entrance Foyer
• • Boys and Girls Toilets
• • Parking and drop-off re-configuration

The program entails a classroom and multi-purpose addition to the school, including the addition of a new entrance and foyer. The school seeks to implement an inspired addition that meets budget limitations and works in concert with the middle school and adjoining high school’s 50’s modernist vocabulary. Stringent budget parameters, the site's size constraints, a sloping site and local height restrictions inform the design.

The resulting design makes reference to the existing 50’s modernist, horizontally oriented, yellow brick middle school, while breaking its pervasive rectilinear motif with the multi-purpose room’s sloping roof lines. The angles of the multi-purpose rooflines echo both the slope of the site and sloping forms at the adjoining high school. In this manner, the addition emerges as more than an extension of the middle school, but as an elaboration on the forms of existing facilities and the site.