MIAMI, FL — Shawmut Design and Construction and architect Perkins+Will announce the enhancement of the Ransom Everglades School campus with a new STEM center. Scheduled for completion in early 2020, the new building is one element of the school's campaign to upgrade its Coconut Grove campus and academic programming.

The three-story, 45,000-square-foot STEM facility will optimize the use of indoor and outdoor connectivity, allowing students to utilize the surrounding nature as their science lab. Collaboration areas throughout the center will enhance team-based learning and promote an environment of thought leadership, experimentation and creativity.

“We’re so excited to be a part of this impressive facility that dramatically elevates the heart of the Ransom Everglades School campus,” said Les Hiscoe, CEO of Shawmut. “By leveraging our vast experience in the education and institutional sectors, our team is creating an incubator that will serve as a center for faculty, administrators, students and visitors to exchange ideas, exhibit new trends and ultimately become a destination for STEM research.”

Founded in 1903, the Ransom Everglades School is a college preparatory day school for grades 6-12. The new STEM center will feature 10 flexible classrooms with movable walls and furniture, as well as laboratories for earth sciences, biology, chemistry and physics that integrate with fabrication and maker labs. Utilizing smart-building design throughout, the facility will feature wide staircases, tech-enabled educational spaces, an outdoor rooftop lab, multi-purpose conference room and a reconfigurable 200-person auditorium.

To round out the overall project, new landscape design will create indoor/outdoor collaboration areas adjacent to the STEM building, as well as planning for traffic flow and drop-off zones. The new building will face the school’s Visual Arts Building to create a new outdoor quad that symbolizes the school’s commitment to integrating science, technology, engineering and math with the humanities.

To increase the project's environmental sustainability, the entire roof will be lined with solar PVs to assist in powering the center, which is targeting LEED Silver certification. As part of the construction process, the school also moved more than 60 trees to a temporary tree garden that will be returned upon completion.

Shawmut’s work on the Ransom Everglades School STEM Center represents the latest in the firm’s national academic portfolio, with current projects at Harvard University, Brown University, Choate Rosemary Hall and Noble and Greenough School.