By Brett Masters '04

After a summer of demolition of the Helen C. Boyden Science Center, the David H. Koch Science Math & Technology Center will soon begin to take form on the northwest side of campus. With its pyramidal predecessor out of the way, administrators hope to begin construction on the $40 million facility by October.

The 78,000 square foot center, slated for completion for the 2005-2006 academic year, will be the Academy's showpiece in attracting new science and mathematics faculty and students.

"Just bringing together science, math and technology is, I think programmatically exciting," said Richard Bonanno, dean of faculty and chair of the project's planning committee. "The ambience of the place will teach you...It's a beautiful structure." From a fiber optic depiction of the northern hemisphere starfield in the building's lobby to rock garden terraces featuring local flora and mineral specimens to displays of fossilized dinosaur footprints, the building invokes the caverny grandeur of a museum. "We're building an ecological building but we're also taking into account pedagogical concerns," Mr. Bonanno said. The new building will have twice the classroom space as the old science center and each classroom will have its own laboratory. "The central atrium will provide a stimulating social gathering place where the old science center had none," Mr. Bonanno said.

In addition to classrooms, the building will feature a 50-seat planetarium, two lecture halls, computer labs, faculty offices, and special project areas. All is incorporated into a highly modern design that planners hope will complement the neo-Georgian vocabulary of the campus.

"We looked at a lot of design possibilities," said Michael Sheriden '58, the school's business manager. "To accommodate the space we needed, a Georgian building would have been so large it would have overwhelmed the campus."

To design the building, the Academy turned to Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, a world-renowned firm which won acclaim for its design of Chicago's Sears Tower, the new Harvard University campus plan, and most recently, as one of several firms chosen to lead the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site in New York. The building's architect, David Childs '58, is one of two designers selected to draw up plans for the reconstruction of the WTC site.

Gilbane & Associates, builders of the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, has been chosen to manage construction of the facility.

"We've taken a lot into consideration, especially ecology," Mr. Sheridan said. The school's hope is that the facility will win a Gold Rating in LEED-Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

LEED is a rating system for ecologically sound construction administered by the US Green Building Council. Adhering to a "green" construction plan, builders spent the summer carefully dismantling the old Boyden Science Center, recycling more than 75% of discarded materials.

Slate from the building's roof was shipped off to residential construction companies, bricks and concrete were ground up and used in laying the new facility's foundation, and fume hoods, among other equipment, were donated to Massachusetts public high schools. Construction of the center comes during a season of building for prep schools. This fall Andover will open the new Richard Gelb Science Center. Exeter recently hailed its Phelps Center, opened in 2001, as "a brick and mortar embodiment" of its charter.

Like these, Deerfield's center will be made of brick and mortar. But, as Mr. Sheridan notes, DA's building will be, appropriately, Green.