Location:Goshen, NY
Size:20,000 square feet
Completion Date:2014
Awards:AIA WHV Citation Award
Orange Ulster BOCES Regional Education Center at Arden Hill was a major adaptive reuse project of the former Arden Hill Hospital Campus. The project goal was to create a renovated facility that consolidated current programs in close proximity to the neighboring BOCES campus and provided space for increase enrollment and additional offerings. The challenge was to create a facility that was unrecognizable as a hospital campus and clearly identifiable as a welcoming and engaging learning environment.
After exploring multiple design alternatives, the selected design solution transformed the entire 200,000sf hospital. The extensive alterations included new building systems, reconfigured spaces to allow for the appropriate room size and program adjacencies, a new addition to connect East and North wings and major renovations to the building’s main entrance vestibule.
While some spaces, like the operating rooms were preserved to be utilized in the school’s nursing program, other spaces like the building’s expansive kitchen facility were customized to meet emerging needs. As the school is a shared government facility, the kitchen was designed not only to serve the Orange Ulster BOCES community, but also to produce and serve over 2000 meals per day for the county’s Meals on Wheels program.
The renovated entry was an integral part of remaking the hospital campus. The building’s sweeping main entry canopy provides the school with a sense of arrival and a sense of identity as an educational facility. The new entry and lobby space feature direct visual connection to the centralize media center. A striking stone wall along with Orange Ulster BOCES’ Learning for Life philosophy, is carried from the main entry through to the media center – the phrase “grows” along the wall in case and height symbolizing and emphasizing the principal.