How do you provide students with a sustainable and resilient campus that fosters collaboration and enhances students’ awareness to the built environment?
How do you provide students with a sustainable and resilient campus that fosters collaboration and enhances students’ awareness to the built environment?

Lick-Wilmerding High School, Expansion & Renovation

Forell|Elsesser provided structural engineering services for the renovation and expansion of the Lick-Wilmerding High School campus. The new 53,000 GSF campus includes adding additional classroom and administrative space, which will help improve indoor environmental conditions as well as create a more sustainable and resilient campus.

The renovation and expansion of the classroom building encapsulates a historic façade and adds an additional floor plate that increases student learning space. The administration building is a new one-story building with an open atrium that creates a warm and welcoming area for students, faculty and incoming guests. The space takes advantage of natural light from the open skylights, which are designed with a light structural steel roof. Additional renovations to the theater and science wing were made to increase the buildings resiliency and provide a safer structure.

The campus is targeting high sustainability goals which include Living Building Challenge, LEED Platinum and net zero energy.

Customized Solution

  • The project included adding a new single story to the existing 2 story building. The new addition was designed to increase classroom space and provide ample space for roof equipment. During this process, the interior wood structure was removed, and the historic concrete façade was preserved.
  • The classroom building floors utilize Post tensioned (PT) concrete to help reduce the overall floor heights. The PT also allowed longer spans to keep the classroom spaces column free, and a thinner profile.
  • The new Administration building was seismically jointed from the classroom building, which allowed our team to creatively integrate the new roof design with the historic façade of the original classroom building.
CATEGORIES

Academic - Community College, K-12, Historic Renovation, Projects


HIGHLIGHTS
  • Architect: EHDD Architecture
  • Owner: Lick-Wilmerding High School
  • General Contractor: Truebeck