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The Hotchkiss School

Lakeville, CT

The Hotchkiss School is an independent, coeducational boarding school for 600 students in grades 9-12 located in Lakeville, Connecticut. Bowie Gridley Architects was commissioned to reimagine the school's dining hall, which was constructed in 1948, to create a larger community dining and gathering venue that would celebrate Hotchkiss's unique, highly sustainable, farm-to-table dining program. BGA led a highly collaborative programming process that engaged students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents. This process generated great excitement and ownership of the project by the whole Hotchkiss community. BGA's design approach seeks to preserve the warm, comfortable feeling of the main dining space that is fondly remembered by alumni and cherished by current students and faculty, while also providing a completely new, modern food service experience that connects the harvesting, preparation and serving of the food. The building's exterior architecture has been redesigned to open the building's interior to the exterior landscape, to enhance views outward, and act as a focal point for several adjacent prominent outdoor quads.