Following completion of its Strategic Plan, The Frederick Gunn School (formerly The Gunnery) sought a comprehensive campus plan that could identify improvements that would reaffirm the school’s strengths and celebrate the extraordinary natural character of the campus.

Working with the school, VMA established several key elements to the plan: Embrace community on campus by creating new social, study, and residential spaces at several scales; provide a safe, walkable campus by consolidating the distinct academic and residential campuses, by separating pedestrian and vehicular flows, and by improving the pedestrian crossing over a local highway; offer appropriately scaled and beautiful facilities to characterize a 21st century boarding school, particularly based on STEM, technology, and library spaces; and, preserve and enhance the natural landscape through a dialogue with the outdoors, emphasizing views to the surrounding landscape from core campus spaces.

In drafting the plan, VMA, after a facilities evaluation and extended conversations with the school community, identified nine projects to be carried out over two decades. The campus plan would also incorporate the findings of a targeted athletic studies done for the school by VMA in 2014, which would better ensure a cohesive approach to the overall plan.

Landscape completed in association with Stephen Stimson Associates Landscape Architects.