Weston, MA

Haley & Aldrich collaborated with the architecture and community design firm, Architerra, on the LEED®-Platinum-designed Garthwaite Center for Science & Art at the Cambridge School of Weston.

The 22,000-sq-ft educational facility was designed to provide sustainable solutions for space needs, while meeting budgetary and education goals. Many of the Center’s sustainable systems are left exposed in order to teach students about how they work. The building features a partial green roof, which lowers heating and cooling loads; an extensive stormwater drainage system that recharges groundwater; and passive solar heating and daylighting. Haley & Aldrich supported the facility’s sustainable design principles by reusing blasted rock as part of the building pad and by utilizing stormwater runoff to recharge groundwater.

The groundwater recharge system uses permanent underslab pressure relief drains and perimeter drains to redirect groundwater away from the structure. Groundwater collected in these relief drains and stormwater from the green roof discharge into a basin created within a blasted bedrock zone.

Haley & Aldrich designed the building foundations to address the characteristics of the building’s diverse bearing surfaces (soil or bedrock), and designed transitions between different types of footings to reduce the possibility of differential settlement in the building foundations.

Haley & Aldrich also helped to coordinate regulatory closeout of two existing out-of-compliance cesspool structures, and managed contaminated septic residuals for treatment and disposal.