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$212 Million Campus Grows Outside Philadelphia

Highlights include a a 600-seat multi-purpose courtyard-style theater, a chapel, and a state-of-the-art athletic complex.

Mairi Beautyman -- Interior Design, 8/15/2006 12:00:00 AM

The campus chapel, images courtesy of Venturi, Scott Brown Associates One of America’s oldest educational institutions—the 220-year old Episcopal Academy—will soon have a new 123-acre campus. Designed by Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates, the Gund Partnership, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, and Hillier Architecture, the campus is slated to open in the Fall of 2008 in Newtown Township, Pennsylvania.

Hillier Architect is master architect for the facility, which will be located along Philadelphia’s western Main Line. Responsible for the development of the overall master plan and design of the Lower School, Middle School, Upper School, and Science Building, in addition to the renovation of three historic farm buildings, landscape architecture, and exterior and interior signage, the firm will serve as design coordinator for the project.

The Gund Partnership, which developed the original campus master plan, designed the new Campus Center. A hub for student activity, this facility sports a 600-seat multi-purpose courtyard-style theater, a black-box theater, dining rooms, a library, and a visual arts center with multiple arts studios.

A state-of-the-art athletic complex, conceived by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, includes a gymnasium, three court field house, ten squash courts, fitness center, dance studio, a wrestling room, and an indoor competition pool, in addition to a 400-meter eight-lane outdoor track and nine athletic fields.

Central to the campus is a chapel designed by Venturi, Scott-Brown & Associates. This building has special significance for Pritzker Prize winner Robert Venturi, a 1944 graduate of Episcopal Academy. For his senior thesis at Princeton, Venturi chose to design a new chapel for the previous Episcopal campus.

“The opportunity to design from a clean sheet of paper, shoulder to shoulder with some of the most respected names in architecture proved a powerful draw for myself and my peers to work as one to create an institution that will prevail for another 200 years,” says Philip Dordai, managing principal of Hillier Architecture.