Salisbury School

Narratives

Architect

The school required new dormitories and faculty housing to attract students and staff to campus. This innovative and efficient 25,000-sf dormitory with attached faculty housing adds 43 dorm rooms and six faculty housing units to the school’s stock of housing.

The new dorm sits on the quiet side of campus and near space available to develop a necklace of dorms in the future. Built into a steep embankment, the northern facade retains the scale of a two-story house, while the three-story southern exposure opens to the sun’s warmth. Clapboard siding, a traditionally residential New England material, responds to the existing dining hall and infirmary across the fields.

The dorm keeps a residential feel despite its institutional nature. The main entrance opens into a naturally lit, two-story living room. A balcony visually connects the living room and second level. Corridors lined with dorm rooms extend in both directions. Each room contains at least two windows, space-saving furniture, and durable doorless closets. Frosted glass transoms bring natural light into the hallway without compromising privacy. The faculty housing includes three 2-bedroom and three 4-bedroom units. The 2-bedroom units are stacked in one wing so each 4-bedroom unit has three full levels and functions as a house.

Oriented for maximum privacy, each faculty house features an individual basement and patio and has its own views and entries. Each unit also has cross-ventilation in every bedroom, a ground-level study/guest room with full bathroom, and offices adjoining the dorm through a glass connecting element. The offices face a large common room that facilitates student-faculty interaction and provides passive supervision of every hallway.

Educator

The building takes into account a universal principle relevant to adolescent development, that being the need for balance between independence and well-defined boundaries. The Sarum Dormitory building embodies this principle by virtue of the layout and design of the physical space for faculty and student living and recreation. And when such developmental needs of adolescents are met, as is the case in this building, the health and wellness of the students is not only addressed but actually improved. Residents of this dorm are showing less emotional vulnerability, assuming increased impromptu leadership roles, demonstrating increased coping, and using peer-to-peer mediation to solve problems. All of this, in the busy life an adolescent boarding student, adds up to a “wellness” that is noticeable day to day and a ‘healthy’ state of mind that supports their physical and intellectual beings.