The Montessori School of the Berkshires is located on a 40-acre campus in Lenoxdale, Massachusetts. Now in its 11th year, the school has grown from 26 students when it first opened to 130 students at the beginning of the 2018-2019 academic years.  Construction of their new school building was started August 2009 and completed in April 2010; students started classes April 26, 2010.

The school is certified as a High Performance Building under the Advanced Buildings Core Performance criteria and the original building was designed to LEED for Schools standards.

The original school building included 5 classrooms and a toddler room which were laid out around a central courtyard in order to provide a free-flow of movement between indoor and outdoor learning, enabling students to build their connection to the natural world. The original courtyard design included patios, gardening plots, a Zen meditation garden, and class meeting spaces.

The school campus was selected because of its diversity of woodlands and wetlands. The site design further developed this diversity with lawn, open meadow, orchard, and gardens areas.

After completion of the initial construction of the new school building, I was invited to serve on the Board of Trustees.  In that capacity, I provided pro bono services to the school and worked with Todd Covert, Head of School, on strategic planning for an addition to the school.  As the school had grown into its new building, it had evolved that many program needs were being accommodated within classrooms and there was a need for dedicated spaces for the school’s growing program.

Dana Bixby Architecture was hired as the architect for the addition project and a more detailed design was started for adding a library, a dedicated 7-8th grade classroom, a music room, multipurpose room, teacher’s room, and administrative spaces.  As the planning moved forward, it became apparent that the project would need to be carried out in two phases so as to match funding resources to project cost. The phase 2 portion of the project, including new outdoor play field and other outdoor facilities, was opened to all beginning in the fall of 2018.

The new library space, though modest, has an openness and connection to the school that balances the quiet and inward looking nature of a library.  Architecturally speaking the library space can be described as having an axiality that connects a person’s attention to the center, the inner world of reading and books, with a natural and easy awareness of what is in the periphery, the outer world. In this balancing of movement in space is an opportunity for the experience of balance within the person.

There is another aspect of this in that a room that evolved in the center of the addition, with no windows, is also the brightest space in the school because of a large skylight in the center of the room.  The center of the space where there is attention to the inner world of reading is open outwardly in this other way of being the brightest space in the school, and open vertically to the sky.

The initial project and the first phase addition project were completed with financing assistance from the USDA Rural Development program.

The Hillside Affordable Housing project was built by the Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire. With volunteer work that Dana contributed in the early stages of the project, the CDC succeeded in organizing the town to vote to give the land to a developer for the purpose of building affordable housing.  Once the CDC was named as developer, schematic design work was completed, zoning permits were obtained, and financing was obtained which enabled the project to move forward.  The zoning permit was done under Chapter 40b, the MA zoning statue that encourages the construction of affordable housing. The scope of the project included ten affordable housing units in three buildings

The site is a very steeply sloping property that presented unique and challenging design issues. The design solution created a village-like “street” with a pathway and steps up the hill, with each of the three buildings connecting to this path.  The project was built with a hybrid of modular and stick frame construction methods, and is Energy Star certified.

Construction of was completed in June of 2009. Allegrone Construction was the construction manager, and Foresight Land Services was the site engineer.

For more information about this project click on this link from the CDC web site:

www.cdcsb.org/projects/hillside-avenue

IS183, an independent non profit art school, is located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in a building known locally as Citizens Hall, which was designed in 1870 by Charles T. Rathburn to serve as a district schoolhouse on the first floor with a large public meeting hall on the second floor. After district schools were consolidated, Citizens Hall continued to be used as a meeting place, but with decreasing frequency. IS183, founded in 1991, leased space in historic Citizens Hall for the first 14 years. After acquiring title to Citizens Hall in June 2005, IS183 Art School undertook a phased program of capital repairs and restoration to address the widespread effects of deferred maintenance on the building. Exterior restoration was completed in May 2009.

Dana Bixby Architecture initially donated services to assist the art school (a non profit organization) in obtaining grant funding for the exterior restoration and then provided architectural services for the restoration. The exterior restoration work was completed with the support of the Massachusetts Historic Preservation Projects Fund and the Town of Stockbridge through the Community Preservation Act.

The historic consultant was Greg Farmer of Agricola, Inc. and the builder was Peter Hamm of Historic Preservation Associates.

Cafe Topia and Topia Arts Center, Adams, MA

The Topia Cafe, created by Nana Simopoulous and Caryn Heilman, is the precursor to The Topia Arts Center in the historic Adams Movie Theater.  The Cafe space was part of the former theater lobby space.

Nana and Caryn, who had also developed, built, and run the Topia Inn, were the founders of the Topia Arts Center nonprofit. The Topia Cafe had opened and The Arts Center hired Dana Bixby Architecture to do schematic design and cost estimating for the adaptive re-use of the old movie house.  Following that, we were hired to do a facade re-design of the Cafe, which is shown here. The exterior of the facade was done in a lime plaster for durability and sustainability.  The “bottle little design” is made of wine bottles and the feeling echoes the “starry light” in the barrel vault ceiling of the cafe. Peter Thorne, cabinet maker from West Stockbridge, made the very fine curved wall at the entry to the cafe.  Developed with Peter’s assistance, this wall is built of locally sourced locust.

Nana and Caryn developed their expertise in non toxic, sustainable design when they developed the Topia Inn.  The performing arts center project was designed to LEED standards.

3D modeling was done for the theater space. See the modeling used in the infomercial created by the Topia Arts Center