BBS Architects completes St. Dominic High School building conversion in Oyster Bay
BBS Architects, Landscape Architects & Engineers has completed the $7.5 million conversion of the St. Dominic High School Science & Technology Building in Oyster Bay, New York which involved renovation and conversion of a 60-year old residential convent structure into a modern educational facility.
Located within the St. Dominic Academy’s campus, the 20,000 square feet St. Dominic High School serves elementary and middle school students in selected classrooms. The converted and upgraded facility will provide students with modern science classrooms and media studio facilities.
The conversion work includes exterior renovations and repairs, construction of new entrance canopies, a complete interior renovation and reconfiguration, a new elevator addition and other ADA accessibility improvements, new MEP systems, and a new telecommunications infrastructure.
The building features three above ground storeys and a lower level. The school houses six science classrooms with adjoining prep rooms, including two biology and one physics, chemistry, earth science, general science, and virtual/remote learning classrooms.
Apart from that the building also includes a “Reflections Room” for quiet meditation, a TV studio, a teachers’ lounge, an assistant principal’s office, and ADA-compliant bathrooms on each floor. The lower level features a general science classroom shared by the elementary and high school students. The upper levels feature high school and middle school classrooms.
Allowing natural light in the interior, the steep slope of the school’s site exposes the back wall of the lower level. The renovated building also includes a high number of sustainable design solutions to the campus.
Converting the small sleeping quarters, work rooms, gathering facilities, and chapel into modern educational spaces, the upgrade has removed the existing internal walls and organised each floor’s plan around a single-loaded corridor, which opened more space for science rooms. The new science rooms now feature interactive, Wi-Fi, and hard-wired-connected A/V systems with interactive projectors and traditional writing boards. The virtual lab provides telecommunications technology for remote learning with guest lecturers.
The original chapel has been converted into a TV/media studio. Several of the chapel’s stained glass windows are restored and installed in the new “Reflections Room” as interior windows along the hallway. They are backlit by the natural light from the exterior windows across the room. The meditation room and sections of hallways also display restored decorative, metal lighting fixtures salvaged from the original chapel.
The classrooms are equipped with CampbellRhea furniture and casework with bamboo veneers and epoxy resin tops. To enable the furniture and cabinetry to lend a dominant colour and texture, the classrooms are painted with understated colour palette. The laboratory infrastructure and equipment consists of water, power, data, gas lines, chemical neutralisation systems at each sink, fume hoods, and eyewash stations.
The interior finishes of the facility include Nora rubber flooring in the classrooms, Capri recycled rubber, and cork blend flooring in the TV studio and the corridors. The hallways feature Scuff Master paint and acoustical tile ceilings with fluorescent light fixtures. Apart from that the hallways also feature a number of glazed panels that visually connect them to learning environments and allow natural light.
In addition to that a pre-existing outdoor porch has been converted into a learning greenhouse adjacent to one of the new biology classrooms. Display areas for student work have been carved out of thick walls at various locations throughout the building. Hallways feature a high number of glazed panels that visually connect them to learning environments and allow natural light into the internal circulation pathways.
The exterior is designed to prevent energy losses by completely insulating all building elements. The building is designed with HVAC and lighting systems that significantly reduce electrical energy use. The major sustainable feature of the project includes the reuse of the existing walls, floors and structural framing.
The exterior renovations includes repairs to windows and the brick façade, replacement of the entire roof, new entrance canopies, and the ADA elevator addition. Re-inventing the look of the school, the building features new, modern exterior canopies.
The painted structures and translucent panel canopies provide contrasting, modern accents juxtaposed against the brick façade and punched openings of the original building. The new exterior addition houses the new four-stop, hydraulic elevator. The site work includes new and repaired sidewalks, ADA access ramp, and landscaping.
