Phillips Exeter Academy, George H. Love'18 Athletic Facility

 

The facility wraps its assembly of halls, two ice hockey rinks, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, and a number of squash courts and an exercise room around the existing Thompson Gym and Cage to form a new athletic complex.

A multi-level spine, bent at a right angle is entered from Court Street by means of a ramp which brings all users to an elevated middle level from which a central staircase is leading visitors to the viewing galleries above and participants to their locker rooms below with level access to the athletic activities.

The sixty foot high clerestory-lit spine, framed by tree-like concrete column clusters and flying buttresses is the main social space of the building.

At the exterior fifteen foot high triangular tubular steel trusses from which the roofs of the halls are suspended shroud the building with an airy cage of weathering steel.

 

Location: Exeter, New Hampshire

Status: Complete 1970

Size: 216,000 SF

Type: Education, Early Work

 
 
 

Images © Ezra Stoller