ALBANY, NY – The Alice Dodge Wallace ’38 Center for the Performing Arts at Emma Willard School has been named the Best K-12 Education project of the year by Engineering News‑Record (ENR) in its annual Best of the Best Awards.
Housed within the school’s original Alumnae Chapel built in 1910, Consigli delivered a full‑gut renovation and expansion that transformed the historic stone structure into a state‑of‑the‑art performing arts venue and community gathering space, while carefully preserving its architectural and cultural significance.
“Like in a ballet performance, the Consigli Construction-led project team practiced deep collaboration and trust to successfully navigate the complex—and sometimes unique—structural, acoustic and sequencing issues as they transformed the structure to support modern performance infrastructure.”
In addition to reimagining the school’s 44,000-square-foot stone chapel into a 450-seat concert hall, Consigli also added a new 20,000-square-foot subterranean arts wing adjacent to the chapel to further expand resources for theater, music and dance. Housed beneath an accessible green roof, the sustainable new space also reduces overall energy usage by leveraging its below-grade structure’s soil thermal mass.
Members of the Consigli team recently joined their design partners, Annum, and representatives from Emma Willard School in New York City to celebrate the recognition at ENR’s Award of Excellence Gala.
This year’s recognition marks Consigli’s second Best of the Best Award in as many years, with Bowdoin College’s Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies and Mills Hall named the Best Higher Education/Research project of 2023.
ENR’s Best of the Best winners are selected by a national panel of judges who evaluate projects based on their ability to overcome challenges, advance industry innovation, benefit the community, and demonstrate excellence in design, construction and safety. The 20 winning projects are drawn from the Regional Best Projects Awards series, which represents outstanding projects and projects teams nationwide.
Read the full Best of the Best Project feature in ENR here.
Learn more about the project here.