Throughout the 2022–23 academic year, faculty, staff, administrators, and students on both campuses worked with planning and design firm Christner Architects to envision Principia’s future, giving shape to next-generation possibilities for each campus.

The master planning process included facility condition assessments of all buildings, space utilization studies, and an inclusive process to develop concepts and options for the future. Town halls and design charrettes allowed students, staff, and faculty to share insights and ideas, and then to respond to developing ideas.

The planning and design principles that grew out of this work provide long-range parameters and conceptual blueprints for the next 15–20 years. The master plan options were previewed by the Board of Trustees in June 2023. As specific plans progress and fundraising is successful, the Board will need to approve projects as they come to fruition.

The master planning work from the past year is already influencing the projects being prioritized for the near term, and multiple projects already in progress have been completed in recent years based on previous master planning. (See timelines, pp. 38–41.)

Future projects will be dependent on donor support and will need to be a demonstrated unfoldment in the same way countless other projects at Principia have come to fruition throughout our 125-year history.

Capital Project Timelines

Informed by the master planning process, and developed with community-wide input, this iterative year-long study produced a set of planning and design principles for each campus. These frameworks will guide the evaluation and exploration of options for designing the future of Principia’s campuses. Within each of the three overarching principles for each campus, several design strategies are outlined on the following pages.

IMPROVE THE SEPARATION BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ZONES ON CAMPUS

• Clarify campus zones with strategically placed parking. Create distinct event parking areas that are convenient for visitors and separated from boarding and academic activities.

• Create thresholds between campus zones. Use design to shape how people move through and use the campus. Place new buildings and landscaping in ways that create soft edges to public and private spaces on campus.

• Provide buffers for boarding spaces with berms, trees, landscape walls, and shrubs to augment residential separation while retaining connection to academic campus.

BUILD ON THE STRENGTHS OF THE CAMPUS

• Create a memorable arrival sequence. Leverage the undulating green space along Clayton Road as a transitional space that welcomes and orients visitors. Design an intuitive and welcoming arrival experience that simplifies wayfinding, improves safety, and inherently separates academic and visitor/event circulation.

• Reinforce the original architects’ vision of a modern village with lowslung, modern buildings embedded in the landscape. Strengthen and preserve the physical continuity of the buildings and reimagine boarding facilities in the same spirit.

LEVERAGE THE SITE AS AN EXTRAORDINARY DIFFERENTIATOR

• Interweave campus buildings with the campus landscape and enhance the sense of interconnectedness. Create spaces that have strong connections to the outside. Shape buildings and landscapes to create outdoor “rooms” well suited for community and academic activities.

• Use the site to demonstrate ecological stewardship through projects that celebrate environmental sustainability. Use native and naturalized landscapes to manage stormwater, support biodiversity, and reduce mowing and pesticide use. Highlight alternative energy sources, including solar panels.

• Consider the whole campus as an expanded classroom, taking advantage of the variety of landscapes and ecologies that exist on the site.

BUILD ON THE STRENGTHS OF THE CAMPUS

• Create an arrival experience that is intuitive and graceful, clarifying the campus organization and wayfinding.

• Establish thresholds that offer meaningful transitions between the outer and inner domain of the campus, between indoor and outdoor space, and between types of outdoor spaces along public paths.

• Reinforce the Chapel Green as the center of campus. Preserve the Chapel Green as the space that guarantees the Chapel prominence and distinguishes it from other campus buildings. Reconsider the foreground landscape through the lens of environmental stewardship and consider a more naturalized foreground to the Chapel.

• Simplify and limit decision making in vehicular and pedestrian circulation. Establish clear distinctions between the residential, academic and administrative, and athletic programmatic areas of the campus.

• Further the tradition started by architect Bernard Maybeck of creating extraordinary architectural experiences on campus through buildings that are genuine to the ethos of Principia and provide meaningful spaces to serve the community.

MAXIMIZE HUMAN INTERACTION AND BUILD COMMUNITY

• Incentivize social connectivity by creating primary circulation paths and indoor and outdoor common spaces that leverage views and create nodes of activity.

• Create social spaces that connect people and that range in scale and location. Design new landscapes and paths that focus human activity.

• Celebrate and reinforce the strength of the student/faculty connection by creating spaces that make faculty accessible to students and encourage engagement.

INTERWEAVE NATURAL AND BUILT WORLDS

• Continue Maybeck’s integration of building and outdoor spaces. Blur the boundaries between the campus and the natural world, reinforcing that engaging in the natural world is a crucial part of growth and education.

• Leverage the natural beauty of the campus and consider the whole campus as a classroom. Find opportunities to enable academic activity throughout the campus in outdoor rooms and collaborative environments.

• Improve and demonstrate environmental stewardship. Diminish presence of cars and emphasize a pedestrian-friendly campus.