Perkins & Will

Billerica Memorial High School

Billerica Memorial High School
© Chuck Choi

Billerica Memorial High School

Perkins&will

ARCHITECTS
Perkins&will

PHOTOS
Chuck Choi (7), Perkins&Will (5)

STATUS
Built

BUDGET
Undisclosed

AREA
300,000 sqft - 500,000 sqft

YEAR
2019

LOCATION
35, River Street, Billerica, MA, United States

CATEGORY
Educational › High School

Billerica Memorial High School
© Chuck Choi

The Town of Billerica quietly reinvented itself in recent years, yet their former high school—an outdated, dysfunctional facility—misrepresented the town’s true identity.

We partnered with the community to reimagine their educational environment and identity through the design of their largest civic building.

Billerica Memorial High School
© Perkins and Will
Billerica Memorial High School
© Perkins and Will

HANDSHAKE

Building siting puts community space in the foreground. After parking at the site’s periphery, the pedestrian environment gracefully welcomes student, teacher, and guest.

SPEECH

Billerica’s new voice reflects its heritage in a New England mill town while expressing its forward-thinking academic mission.

Billerica Memorial High School
© Chuck Choi
Billerica Memorial High School
© Chuck Choi

Red brick is reimagined with geometric corbeling, while timber takes new meaning through carbon conscious detailing. Simple, honest materials are synthesized in inventive, three-dimensional compositions.

DRESS

The school’s neoclassical civic neighbors and late-1800s industrial context informed a design that connects distinct elements to speak a humble material language. This language stands as a metaphor for the mission of the “maker” classroom, a part of the school’s guiding curriculum.

COMPLEXATION

The school transcends basic academic illumination requirements with a solution premiating natural daylight over artificial light.

Billerica Memorial High School
© Chuck Choi
Billerica Memorial High School
© Chuck Choi

Inhabiting the prosaic and poetic, both interior and exterior use daylight to capture the rhythms of academic time as the sun pushes shadow around and through the building over the course of the day, semester, and year.

SIGNATURE

Billerica’s new brand and visual identity are marked by “Reflection with Direction: Honoring the Past, Aiming for the Future.”

Founded on the town’s culture of humble pride, our design of the full suite of logos, colors, fonts, and graphics empowers the town to confidently represent itself in any setting.

Billerica Memorial High School
© Chuck Choi
Billerica Memorial High School
© Chuck Choi

The architecture demonstrates to students how simplicity can give rise to depth and how we, collectively, can be re-made. As the brick transforms and is animated by the elements, the building expresses the continuous change education can impart on our identity.


Billerica Memorial High School
© Perkins and Will
Billerica Memorial High School
© Perkins and Will
Billerica Memorial High School
© Perkins and Will

Perkins & Will
T +1 212 2517000 F +1 212 2517111
Perkins & Will
1250 Broadway Suite 200, New York, NY 10001, United States