Raising the Bar to Platinum |Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin | Fall '25

Raising the Bar to Platinum

By Peter Morris Dixon

The campus of Choate Rosemary Hall, with its great variety of buildings thoughtfully organized across 458 acres of rolling Connecticut landscape, is the ever-evolving physical representation of the School’s unwavering values. Early expansion, the return of Rosemary Hall to Wallingford in 1971, followed by the adoption of coeducation in 1977 have all left their marks on the campus and its architecture. In the twenty-first century, as concerns about the effects of modern culture on the environment have come increasingly to the fore, the imperative to mitigate resource depletion and climate change has been addressed with considerable planning, and Choate Rosemary Hall has committed to leadership in environmental sustainability both in its curriculum and in its operations — including an extraordinary five buildings LEED-certified at the Gold or Platinum level by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), with a sixth expected to be certified later this year. In the words of Head of School Alex Curtis, “sustainability is a necessary component of our contemporary values-based education. If you think of education as an investment in our collective future, you must think about ensuring that our future is secure.”

The School’s 2012 strategic plan called for the School to achieve net-zero energy consumption by 2050, an objective that, as Dr. Curtis remembers, “I could have punted to my successor, but I don’t think you get to say, on sustainability goals, ‘not my problem.’” Accordingly, the School’s 2021 strategic plan identified the goal of becoming an acknowledged secondary school leader in environmental sustainability by operating with a reduced carbon footprint and by creating a climate-change-solutions curriculum. It also committed to achieving net-zero energy consumption by the tighter deadline of 2033 — meaning action must be taken now — and, as part of this accelerated dedication to environmental responsibility, raised the bar for all major construction projects from LEED Gold, as specified in the 2012 plan, to LEED Platinum.

"We realized that doing more meant doing better, and LEED Platinum made that distinction,” says Dr. Curtis.

The USGBC’s LEED rating system — LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” — gives points for such criteria as environmental impact reduction, water conservation, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor air quality. Despite the appearance of other rating programs for sustainable design, the LEED program, updated several times since its introduction in the late 1990s, remains the standard for both new construction and renovation projects. The USGBC currently requires a minimum of 80 points out of a possible 110 for Platinum certification for new buildings, and 60 points for Gold. Critically, LEED certification is earned not on intent but on actual performance, with buildings receiving certification only after demonstrating their success in operation. In addition to the cost of building sustainably, there is a modest cost for taking a project through the LEED certification process. Dr. Curtis believes that LEED certification is important to ensuring buildings function as intended, and because not all sustainable design strategies are visible, that the plaques that announce this respected third-party affirmation are valuable tools for communicating the School’s commitment.

The Kohler Environmental Center (KEC), the first building to be realized with Choate’s commitment to environmental responsibility top of mind, was designed in tandem with the groundbreaking new curriculum it houses: the Environmental Immersion Program, conceived as a “year abroad” for a cohort of 16 students to focus their studies on environmental responsibility. Its home, on a site a short bike ride from the center of campus, was designed by New York-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA); the design team was led by Robert Stern and his partners Graham Wyatt and Kevin Smith. The Kohler Center was completed in 2012 and certified LEED Platinum in November of that same year. The building takes advantage of environmentally responsible strategies both traditional — balanced daylight in the classrooms, operable clerestory windows and a tower for natural ventilation — and state-of-the-art, including geothermal wells for heating and cooling, rooftop arrays for solar water heating, and a high-performance building envelope. Materials were chosen for their durability. The building wears its technology lightly, its facades of rubblestone and fiber-cement siding blending comfortably into the woodland setting, its profile recalling traditional New England farm buildings. The adjacent field of photovoltaic panels produces more electricity than the building requires over the course of each year. The success of the KEC encouraged changes on the main campus, where, under the leadership of Dr. Curtis, four buildings have since 2012 been LEED-certified Gold. Notably, the buildings at Choate Rosemary Hall certified under the LEED rating system do not adhere to a single visual identity constrained by “green” building techniques; rather, they present an impressive variety of architectural expression appropriate both to their location on campus and to the programs they serve.

St. John Hall, Choate Rosemary Hall’s student center, was designed by Baltimore-based Bowie Gridley Architects under the leadership of principals Bill Gridley and Richard Salopek and completed in 2017. (Bowie Gridley is now part of DLR Group and moved into that firm’s Washington, D.C. office in 2022.)

Replacing an inefficient 1950s building that proved intractable to renovation, the new St. John Hall is connected to Hill House and complements its Georgian Revival architectural expression. Inside, the building’s flexible daylightflooded spaces — lounges, a snack bar, a game room, a media room, and the Choate Store — foster interpersonal engagement and social learning; the building also provides rooms for student clubs, lockers for day students, study rooms, conference rooms, and deans’ offices. Sustainable design strategies, including geothermal wells that minimize energy consumption for heating and cooling, helped earn the building LEED Gold certification shortly after it opened. When a few years later a fire led to significant water damage at Hill House at the heart of the historic campus, the School decided to rebuild, rather than start anew. Originally designed by Francis Waterman and completed in 1911, Hill House established the red-brick Georgian Revival vocabulary that continues to characterize much of the campus today. The centrality of the building in the School’s architectural heritage was doubtless one motivation for the decision to save what remained; another, certainly, was the fact that preservation and adaptive re-use are among the most resource-efficient strategies in facilities design. The renovation and restoration project, again designed by DLR Group / Bowie Gridley, was completed in 2021 and certified LEED Gold in April 2022.

“It is an inherently responsible strategy to preserve existing buildings so you’re not sending a massive amount of masonry and concrete and steel to a landfill,” says Salopek. “Though the water damage to the wood and drywall inside Hill House had led to untenable environmental conditions, the solid masonry facades were not damaged. Nonetheless we substantially improved the building’s envelope by putting in new windows with highly energy-efficient glass and applying spray-foam insulation to the interior face of the masonry to reduce air infiltration.”

The renovated building now also features low water-use plumbing fixtures and LED lighting. Overcoming the challenge of the building’s modest ceiling heights, which did not allow for floor- or ceiling-mounted air-conditioning units, the architects developed an innovative strategy using radiant gypsum board to transmit heating and cooling through the walls.

“With both of our buildings at Choate,” says Salopek, “we worked to reinforce the character of the historic campus, concealing sustainable strategies within a Georgian architectural framework, while creating environmentally healthy modern interiors where kids can be kids, whether for living, at Hill House, or for coming together, at St. John Hall.”

Ann and George Colony Hall, RAMSA’s first contribution to Choate Rosemary Hall’s main campus, picks up on a different strain of the School’s architectural heritage: it complements the Paul Mellon Arts Center, designed by leading Modernist architect I.M. Pei and completed in 1972, extending its geometries and adapting its material palette of board-formed concrete and large expanses of glass curtainwall. Again designed under the leadership of RAMSA partners Stern, Wyatt, and Smith, Colony Hall takes advantage of technology not available to Pei in the 1970s, such as highly insulative state-of-the-art glass that allows plenty of daylight into the lobby while minimizing heat gain and wind intrusion, reducing the need for air conditioning and heating. In addition to an auditorium sized to accommodate Choate’s weekly All School meetings, and tunable to all sorts of artistic performances from spoken word to full orchestra, the building is also home to studios, rehearsal rooms, and support spaces for the School’s music and dance programs. A rooftop photovoltaic array supplies a significant portion of the building’s power needs. Completed in 2019, Colony Hall was certified LEED Gold in January 2020.

Accompanying the accelerated goals of the School’s 2021 strategic plan was Dr. Curtis’s decision to commit to LEED Platinum certification for all future major construction projects. “When I arrived five years ago,” says Patrick Durbin, Choate’s Chief Financial Officer, “our standard was LEED Gold. Our strategic plan committed the School to leadership in environmental responsibility, so the question was asked, why aren’t we building at the top of this world-recognized standard today? After all, the Kohler Center had been certified LEED Platinum in 2012. I expected a substantial premium, something like 20%, to take a project from Gold to Platinum. But when I looked into it further, I learned it was only just north of 5%,” says Durbin.

"And that’s only part of the calculus. For one thing, there is payback: we’re using less energy, we’re generating more energy, and we’re choosing materials that last longer. Second, it’s where the young people are headed. They are ultimately our clientele, and they are much more environmentally aware than older generations — so looking toward the future, and how we remain competitive, we really don’t have a choice."

Stepping up to meet this upgraded commitment is Carr Hall, Choate’s new welcome center and admission building — the first building many new visitors to campus will experience. “With the jump to LEED Platinum, the admission building will communicate immediately the School’s commitment to environmental responsibility — not in a show-offy way, but as a demonstration of how deeply embedded this commitment is in the life of our School,” says Dr. Curtis.

The team at RAMSA, led by Partner Kevin Smith and Associate Partner George de Brigard, designed Carr Hall in the spirit of a historic New England village farmhouse that had been added to over time and then converted to institutional use. “Carr Hall is the latest chapter in the continuing story of Choate’s commitment to a sustainable campus. At first glance, the new building looks like a beautiful 19th-century white brick house, at home among the collection of historic houses along East Main Street,” says Smith. “But there’s a twist. The roof is actually photovoltaic panels, and instead of a lumbering oil furnace, high efficiency heat pumps provide an all-electric solution to heating and cooling. RAMSA is delighted to be a part of this story and salutes Choate for challenging us to reach LEED Platinum certification.” De Brigard adds, “As is the case with all LEED Platinum projects, we had to pursue the full gamut of credits in all of the categories: a whole-building life-cycle assessment for embodied carbon guided the selection of materials inside and out; modeling during the design process for daylight and views reduced the need for artificial lighting; and advanced metering at all panels will help keep the building operating at peak efficiency.”

The Carr Hall project also creates a new 70-car underground visitors parking lot topped with a green roof to serve as a new campus lawn overlooking the School’s playing fields. By providing electric-vehicle charging stations, and by avoiding the disadvantages of surface parking lots such as runoff from oil, the underground lot will not only contribute to the project’s LEED Platinum status but also achieve Parksmart certification in a program developed and administered by GBCI / Green Business Certification that recognizes projects for innovative parking strategies, increased energy efficiency, and better lighting and ventilation.

The improvements to the campus continue with projects large and small. The annual over-the-summer renovations of some of the School’s faculty houses will now include, for example, the installation of rooftop solar tiles that resemble traditional metal roofs. The School is embarking on the first phase of a project that will provide each of the campus’s four quadrants with its own geothermal field. “The cost,” says Durbin, “is not always in dollars; it’s more a mindset change. Planting native species, whether trees or wildflowers, doesn’t necessarily take more money or effort. It’s a decision that requires intention.”

Katrina Linthorst Homan, Choate’s Director of Sustainability, leads the School’s C-Proctor program — “C” stands for “conservation” as well as for “Choate” — the student arm of the School’s sustainability committee that constitutes an on-the-ground environmental task force, supporting programs such as school-wide food-waste composting, which was initiated in the dining hall in 2008 and expanded to the dorms during the pandemic. There’s also demonstrable success in the collection for charitable donation that takes place at the end of each school year: so significant is the reduction of waste, says Homan, that “we haven’t needed to get dumpsters in years.” Homan and the C-proctors have worked to make recycling visible on campus, enhancing prominent tripartite bins for compost, recycling, and trash with engaging hand-drawn signage; still, she says, “the most prominent visual representations of our efforts to be sustainable are our buildings — and it’s visibility, things people can see, that keeps sustainability front of mind. It keeps students very conscious of what our footprint is, how we can reduce it, and how we can lead by example.”

Dr. Curtis emphasizes that all this commitment to environmental responsibility is not an individual effort, but rather the result of “a team of people making it happen. Patrick Durbin, who didn’t blink when I proposed moving from Gold to Platinum, has been a remarkable partner. Katrina Homan’s approach — not goading or nagging, but encouraging and enlightening — has changed the very culture of our school. Our entire facilities team have retrained themselves, especially Steve Cahoon, our Assistant Director of Energy Management, who has absolutely reinvented himself to be an expert. Joe Scanio continues to lead the Environmental Immersion Program he helped initiate. And our Board has never hesitated.”

But ultimately, it’s the students who will change the world. In the course in the architectural history of the campus he co-leads in the spring term, Dr. Curtis discusses how his predecessor George St. John conceived the original master plan for the “School on the Hillside,” with its four quadrants, its vistas, and the way the campus lives in harmony with the landscape. As a model for how students act today can bring about a better future, he points to how, on hills that had earlier been stripped for agriculture, students in the 1910s and 1920s replanted the trees that still enhance the campus today. As today’s students move forward into the wider world, says Dr. Curtis, “I hope they’ll ask the right questions — and that when they’re decision-makers, they’ll make the right decisions.”

“I don’t want the students to think of sustainability only in some classes or in some buildings,” emphasizes Dr. Curtis. “I want it to be the air they breathe."