This one-story humanities center of 7000 square feet is on a college preparatory boarding school campus in Winchendon, Massachusetts. The Winchendon School enrolls boys and girls in Grades 8 through 12, as well as a postgraduate year. Founded in 1926, Winchendon seeks to create “a structured and traditional environment for students of good character and good ability who have not reached their academic potential.” The new center concentrates eight humanities classrooms, each serving only 8-12 students, with direct access to the outdoors as well as to the commons.

The choice of a timber frame structure for the classrooms along a commons with a fireplace hearth was made to reinforce the traditional agricultural character of the surrounding 236 acres of old farmland and woodlands. The stained cedar shingles and clapboard mark this academic building as an inviting destination amid an academic complex of shed-roof, red brick pavilions.