Students and faculty helped to plan and design the new quadrangle
Last week, students and faculty weaved through the Mural Room in Paresky Commons (Commons), where the Office of the Physical Plant (OPP) hosted two dorm engagement meetings over lunch to propose a new dorm quadrangle located behind Graves Hall. Community members were welcomed to view and inquire about the projects created by the company Perkins+Will.
The new dorms themselves would contain various student spaces and many energy-efficient features. In their current iteration, they will hold 52 students and four faculty apartments each. Joe LoBuono, Director of Facilities, explained that the plan to make the dorms has been years in the making, and noted that their construction will address current campus needs.
“The 2016 Campus Master Plan included a goal of providing a ‘Diversity of Residential Experiences’ for both students and faculty. In 2023, the Trustees requested an update to the 2016 Master Plan, which included an overview of progress and an update on campus priorities. The resulting 2023 Master Plan Update recommended the construction of a new residential quad to provide diverse housing choices and move towards a greater equity of experience for all students. These new dorms will provide housing choices that improve the student environment while also addressing maintenance and efficiency concerns that are evident in some of the smaller dormitories,” wrote LoBuono in an email to The Phillipian.
The engagement sessions were spearheaded by a steering committee comprising members of OPP, Trustees, and campus faculty. Susan Tsao Esty, Dean of Students and Residential Life and a member of the committee, elaborated on the objective of the student feedback sessions, noting that getting up-to-date opinions is especially critical given Andover’s lack of recent dorm-building experience.
“[The steering committee] wanted to bring ideas to the community and get people’s thoughts about the different options that we could have in dorms for us. We have not built dorms in decades on this campus… knowing how dorms look on other campuses now, are there elements of those dorms that we would like to incorporate into our new dorms when they eventually get approved and built?… What are the things 20 years from now that dorms will have to make them homey, liveable, community-building spaces?” said Esty.
In the meetings themselves, there were various activities for student and faculty attendees to experiment with and provide feedback on current designs. Daniel Zhang ’28 described the numerous visual amenities, which included various blueprints, concepts for community spaces, as well as a three dimensional model of housing units.
“They had a room mockup of approximately how one of the one-room doubles will look like. They had posters which featured a variety of indoor spaces, including game rooms, quiet rooms, phone booths, and also outdoor lawn area possibilities… They asked us to fill out a survey, or if we were in-person, to use glue and paper and think of an arrangement that we like for the existing floor plan. I really liked this because it allowed current students and faculty to give feedback,” said Zhang.
Zhang also noted that the activities were designed so participants could see each other’s ideas, helping him gain a broader perspective on the functionality of the dorms. He summarized some of the main throughlines he saw.
“You can actually see other people’s answers [on the survey]. That was really insightful, because I got to see a lot of the faculty concerns, which I never even thought about, such as faculty parking and where faculty kids will store their outdoor stuff during the winter. For a lot of faculty, parking was important, and garage space was important. For students, noise isolation was important and good lighting was important,” said Zhang.
The feedback students and faculty provide serves to help guide the decisions pertaining to housing and community spaces for the quadrangle. Henry Zimmerman ’27 elaborated on the importance of current community input for future cohorts of students and faculty at Andover.
“It’s important that students get to be [a] part in planning for the future of the academy. I know a lot of alumni and administrators have a stake in the school’s future, but what many students fail to realize is that they soon will be alumni with a stake in the future of the institution as well. So even though this project will not be completed while any of the current students are still on campus, it still is important for the future of the school, and we owe it to future students to participate in the feedback process,” said Zimmerman.
