HANOVER, N.H.—With a completion date slated for this month the new Dartmouth College Dana Hall renovation in Hanover is targeted for LEED Gold certification.

This $25 million project reuses and adds to a vacant library in the heart of the medical school quad, that will transform it into a vibrant faculty center.

Leers Weinzapfel Architects is the architect on this impressive project and Windover Construction is the construction manager.

Located at the heart of 1960s medical school buildings on the school’s siloed north campus, the 32,995-square-foot Dana Hall project — as well as new entrances for its surrounding buildings, a wide pedestrian bridge, and new circulation between buildings — is transforming the college’s least compelling area into a well-scaled, inviting north quad. The initiative will generate an accessible, seamless link between north campus and the historic green and main campus, allowing it to be shared with undergraduate sciences.

The demolition of an unused laboratory adjacent to Dana Hall made way for its new addition, which reorients the building to create inviting campus connections to the south. Comprising the new social center of north campus, the addition houses the building’s lobby and a café, with an adjacent terrace overlooking a green.

Tied together by a spiral object stair visible from the south lawn, the building’s upper floors contain faculty offices, classrooms, and places for student gathering. The penthouse level features a solar-paneled canopy and a south-facing planted terrace that overlooks the iconic main campus. The walkout graduate student lounge in the basement opens to a protected courtyard below a pedestrian bridge.

Existing hazardous materials in Dana Hall required removing the interior down to its concrete columns and slabs before construction could begin.

As a reused structure in a cold climate, the choices of high R value terra-cotta-clad walls, solar panel canopy triple-glazed windows, and south-facing glass with an expanded metal interlayer to limit summer sun — along with reusing the existing concrete structure — create a building with a low embodied energy that approaches net zero energy usage.

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In the half decade between 2011 and 2016, the school’s enrollment increased by nearly 50 percent. The school first addressed its growing needs by installing a modular classroom back in 2013. Because the average class size of the school has continued to grow, the new 1,240-square-foot classroom will serve as a permanent solution — for now.

The four-year-old temporary classroom, which was installed inside of a multipurpose room (that would occasional double as a community center), has found a second life as a library and an instruction space for small groups. Regaining the community space will be a boon to area residents who use it for a variety of civic functions and ceremonies.

“We’re very much conscious of, once our new classroom is built, using that as soon as it’s ready, because we want to give that space back to the community for their use,” Lisa Davenport, vice chairwoman of the Stoddard School Board and chairwoman of the James Faulkner Elementary School Building Committee, told local news source the Keene Sentinel.

“We’ve made the classroom space in the Community Room work using portable panel walls, but it is by no means ideal,” said Teaching Principal Martha LeMahieu in a statement. “The new classroom addition will give the school full use of the Community Room for what it was intended — a school gymnasium, cafeteria and Town of Stoddard Community Room.”

The new classroom is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2017. MacMillin, a DEW Construction Affiliate in Keene, N.H., was the low bidder for the project, coming in at $399,500, according to a statement from the school. The total project cost is $493,000. At the Stoddard School District Annual Meeting last March, voters approved $172,000 to be raised from taxation, with the $321,000 remaining to come from the Stoddard School Build, Design, Expansion, Renovation and Construction Expendable Trust that was established in 2007.

The school has every reason to make a community room available to the area’s voters, who summoned the political will to push through a six-figure, one-time expenditure on behalf of the learning institution. The $172,000 figure was  raised via taxes and approved by voters in March 2017. Davenport expressed gratitude to voters for approving the tax. Of note is the fact that, in 2016, voters rejected a $2.2 million plan the school had presented seeking funds for renovation and additions.

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