Billerica Memorial High School

Project highlights: 

• Architect: Perkins & Will
• Owner: Town of Billerica
• Location: Billerica, Mass.

Billerica, Massachusetts, just northwest of Boston, has been on the upswing in recent years, but its high school, outdated and dysfunctional, misrepresented the town’s contemporary identity. In addition to its high school spaces, the 443,000-square-foot building also hosted pre-K, early intervention education, and numerous district offices. Its underutilized and undersized spaces were not accessible and posed countless challenges for faculty and staff. The new school, however, reflects Billerica’s commitment to education and its evolving civic story.

The new site sits at Billerica’s true civic center, which also includes the town hall, fire and police stations, and a public indoor ice skating rink. Once construction was completed, the old 1955 school was demolished to accommodate new athletic fields, walking paths, and a revamped civic green. Siting for the new school foregrounds community space by leveraging the most traveled approach from the surrounding town. After parking along the site’s periphery, the pedestrian environment gracefully welcomes students, teachers, and guests alike.

The school’s vernacular reflects Billerica’s New England mill town heritage while simultaneously expressing its progressive academic mission. Its neoclassical civic neighbors and late-1800s context helped shape a design that connects distinct elements to evoke a humble material language. Traditional red brick was reimagined by the design team through geometric corbeling, and the school’s timber structure takes new meaning through carbon-conscious detailing. Throughout its spaces, simple materials have been transformed into inventive, three-dimensional compositions.

Intentional and flexible design strategies throughout the building help address the need for community spaces without overbuilding the school’s total footprint and envelope. Spaces like the triple-height dining commons are intentionally sized to host school meals during the day before transitioning to accommodate cheerleading practice in the afternoon. The space is also used for large community gatherings and standardized testing on nights and weekends.

Steeped in Billerica’s culture of humble pride, new branding elements designed by the team are also integrated into the architecture. Logos, colors, fonts, and graphics were all seamlessly transferred to signage, digital media, and uniforms, empowering the town to represent itself in any setting.

Billerica was one of only a handful of high schools in Massachusetts to open during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, it became a testing site for resilience and best practices. The team incorporated critical feedback it received as the school opened to publish K-12 Roadmap to Return, which gathered strategies and resources for a safer return to school during the pandemic and a post-occupancy evaluation process with the state.