School Celebrates Grand Opening

The Bancroft School in Mount Laurel, N.J., celebrated its grand opening on Monday, December 18, 2017. The new campus provides a regional destination of hope where expanded and upgraded learning and living spaces are designed specifically to meet the needs of special education students and their families.

Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm, supported the school with selecting and then developing an appropriate site for the new 80-acre campus.

 Following site selection, Dewberry was responsible for full land development services, including survey; landscape architecture; and site/civil, geotechnical, environmental, and traffic engineering. The design actualizes Bancroft’s vision to provide opportunities for exploration and community interaction with outdoor walking paths of various scales; locations for play, including sports fields and playgrounds; and garden areas that focus on bringing nature into the everyday interaction of the children in the school. Dewberry studied how the school’s special needs students would use the space and designed secure areas that provide a safe environment without feeling constrained or confining. Hardscape and landscape materials and plantings were carefully selected to keep users safe.

Featured

  • abstract illustration of school gym

    How the Gymnasium Can Serve as a Model for Learning Space Design

    Multipurpose gyms work because flexibility was built into the brief from the start, not retrofitted later. The same logic applies to academic spaces.

  • Philadelphia Middle School Facility Earns LEED Gold Certification

    The Alternative Middle Years (AMY) at James Martin Middle School in Philadelphia, Penn., recently received a LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, according to a news release. The School District of Pennsylvania partnered with KSS Architects on the project.

  • Big Horn Academy

    Big Horn Academy

    Established in 1999, the Education Design Showcase is a vehicle for showing off innovative — yet practical — solutions in planning, design, architecture, and construction. Big Horn Academy has been recognized with an EDS 2026 Project of Distinction award in the category of New Construction.

  • Cleveland High School Breaks Ground on Modernization

    Portland Public Schools in Portland, Ore., recently announced that construction has begun on a modernization project for Cleveland High School, according to a news release. The existing building will be replaced with a new, 300,000-square-foot facility at the same site.