A private pre-K through 12 school on a 360-acre campus in Town and Country is in the middle of a $30 million overhaul of its Upper School, swapping out traditional classrooms for flexible, reconfigurable learning spaces and reworking how traffic moves across the grounds. The first phase of the project is already finished, and students have spent a full semester working inside it.
First Phase Already in Daily Use
The $30 million figure comes from a report by The Business Journals, which describes Principia School as undertaking the campus-wide upgrades to create more flexible learning spaces and improve traffic flow. Principia's own account of the project, published on its principiapurpose.org site, says that “with the first phase of the multi-year Upper School renovation now complete and a semester of student use in the books,” the new spaces are already shaping daily school life.
Those finished classrooms are part of the school's effort to create more flexible learning spaces.
Next Up: A Student Commons
The next phase is expected to modernize building systems and add life-safety and accessibility upgrades, along with a dedicated storm shelter, per the school's account.
Perhaps the most visible addition on the horizon is a three-story Student Commons, which the school describes as a centralized community space to be built onto the existing Upper School courtyard. Architecture firm Arcturis, which worked on the design, says the plan includes adaptable classrooms, studios and labs meant to support interdisciplinary learning, along with a reimagined entry sequence intended to improve campus flow and accessibility.
Modernizing an Aging Campus
Principia frames the renovation as overdue. On its giving page, the school states that “most current Upper School classrooms, labs, and traffic patterns have not kept pace with evolving educational practices.”
