Education
We design award-winning structures and building envelopes that support institutional culture, digital integration, accessibility, sustainability, and bold architectural expression for public and private schools, colleges, and universities.
Our holistic approach yields high-performance educational facilities engineered with precision and purpose. We carefully consider institutional goals, programming, user needs, sustainability and wellness targets, and local drivers and conditions throughout the planning and design process.
We leverage our broad experience in a wide variety of project types to bring the latest techniques in structural design and façade and building envelope to the design of state-of-the-art educational facilities.
From academic and research buildings to athletic facilities and campus infrastructure, we solve problems and optimize each program space, with a view to serving the building’s users throughout the building’s lifecycle.
In fact, over the decades, we have successfully employed systems thinking to devise engineering solutions that enhance building performance and that are cost effective to build, operate, and maintain.
Whether for public or private schools or universities, DeSimone consistently devises lasting solutions that maximize the impact of funding, and optimize learning and campus space by designing for flexibility, reconfiguration, adaptation, and sustainable durability.
For new construction and the revitalization or adaptive reuse of aging or underutilized school or campus buildings, we’ve engineered innovative, efficient solutions for millions of square feet of educational facilities, including classrooms, libraries, dormatories, research and collaborative spaces, and stadiums and training facilities.
The DeSimone team has completed an impressive portfolio of educational buildings—nationally and internationally—for a wide range of public and private clients. Our structural team has played an essential role in creating the soon-to-be-complete 574,000-SF (53,300 SM), twelve-story New Jersey Innovation Hub at the Health & Life Science Exchange (HELIX NJ) in New Brunswick, New Jersey, a vertical innovation district providing industry and universities with a shared ecosystem to research, learn, work, and collaborate. Born of a multi-entity, public-private partnership that includes Rutgers University, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and the New Brunswick Development Corporation (DEVECO), the hub will offer premier workspaces and labs for startups and companies operating across healthcare, biotech, pharma, and life sciences.
A recent collaboration between our structural design team and our structural detailing team led to the completion of two steel-and-concrete sustainable high-performance public charter schools in Connecticut—just in time for school to begin. The 98,280 SF (9,100 SM) Cromwell Middle School, designed to support STEAM, includes specialized science, engineering, art, and math spaces, while the Bassick High School, a 195,000-SF (18,100 SM), four-story learning environment in Bridgeport, embraces the stunning views of its waterside site.
Our façade and building envelope team also brings their expertise to bear on such education projects as the Stevens Institute Housing and University Center in Hoboken, NJ, and the Vance Hall Academic Building at UPenn. The exceptional in-house collaboration between DeSimone’s structural and façade consulting teams on such projects as KIPP Charter School in the Bronx yielded project budget and schedule efficiencies as well as design enhancements and innovation.
Whether for top-tier private colleges and universities like Yale, the New School, Bard, Columbia University School of Nursing, Princeton, and Cornell Tech, or for quality institutions in public systems like SUNY Purchase or UT Austin, DeSimone offers a multi-disciplinary team of experts focused on your vision and goals, an array of specialized services, and a combination of local knowledge and global resources to achieve them.
About us
In an industry in which consolidation has become the norm, DeSimone stands apart from large engineering practices. The diversification of our services enables us to support a global clientele experiencing complex challenges. We remain independent so that we are able to provide bespoke and personal solutions, wherever your vision takes you.
Structural engineering is where we began, and it is still the core of our practice. But through the years, we have expanded the services we offer our clients, from façade and building envelope to vertical transportation to steel detailing and fabrication-ready modeling to advisory services.
