The Athletic Health and Wellness Center encourages collaboration, play, and holistic wellness in the everyday lives of students and staff at Chatham Hall. Built on the site of an underperforming 1990 Gym and locker room building, this new two-story facility includes a new gym with raised running track, fitness studios, a terrace, play lawn, and new garden courtyard.

The engagement process for the Health and Wellness Center involved a coordinated series of workshops, interviews, and surveys. Brainstorming exercises encouraged participants to think expansively, while other exercises helped gain consensus and set priorities. One-on-one faculty and staff interviews that focused on the history, context, and people of Chatham Hall revealed more specific feedback on trends explored in the workshops. Surveys allowed the design team to go deeper and identify patterns among students, parents, faculty, staff, and alumnae.

The Athletic Health and Wellness Center’s program is organized in a slim two-story bar that is closer to the proportions of existing campus buildings. This slimmer Health and Wellness block increases each user’s connection to the natural world through views of campus and a landscape of trees and plants. These larger landscape areas will provide opportunities to gather, connect, and reflect, and promote a general sense of calm on the building’s interior. Responding to the school’s desire to teach and model habits of environmental stewardship, the building is designed to be net-zero energy ready with a PPA-provided photovoltaic array.