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Changing the landscape
As of the summer of 2015, St. Paul’s has invested $2.7 mil-
lion toward the renovation of Ohrstrom’s lower level, a
project that began in June and is scheduled for completion
in the summer of 2016. The new Center for Innovative
Teaching (CIT) has undergone the first of two phases,
paving the way for a new space that will combine the
resources and staff of Ohrstrom with the Office of Aca-
demic Affairs. The plan involves the implementation of
multipurpose spaces and two new learning labs, creating
an environment conducive to the way Millennials have
grown accustomed to learning.
“It’s hard to do in the library, but we’re trying to create
smaller meeting rooms for the students to get together,”
says Paul Lachance, associate director for facilities engi-
neering at SPS.
The Ohrstrom stairwell figures to be the next phase
of development, opening the space to make room for
an atrium. Asked if communal space is something the
School often takes into consideration when designing or
redesigning a new building, Lachance says, “It’s always
something we’re thinking about. We do this a lot with
faculty homes, renovating, etc. The communal feel is a
big thing now [aesthetically].”
The communal feel continues to be a point of emphasis
for big universities and secondary schools, including
SPS, where dwindling foot traffic in libraries has raised
prospects of new integration methods to maximize space
and generate active collaboration among students. Even
still, Ohrstrom was never known as a “shushing place,”
says Franky Abbott ’94, project manager for the Digital
Library of America, a national nonprofit that serves as
a portal for public access to millions of digitized items
and publications.
“There were always places where students could sit
together and work together,” Abbott says. “But now you
see public libraries and academic libraries increasing
the amounts of space being devoted to people working
together, people being able to, of course, have access to
WiFi, people being able to plug in devices and computers,
and even then an increased attention to helping students
and patrons in those spaces make things online as citizens
of the Internet. There are benefits and challenges of that.”
Since it was built in 1991, Ohrstrom has long been a
leader among its peers, providing SPS students with heaps
of cutting-edge resources. SPS is the first secondary
school to obtain and use Shared Shelf, a content manage-
ment system developed by the nonprofit Artstor Digital
Library, a collection of 1.9 million high-quality images
for educational use that will allow the library to digitize
and catalog the SPS archives. The re-crafting of the
library, with the Center for Innovative Teaching, promises
to put SPS at the forefront yet again by expanding beyond
the limitations of a “box” or a “warehouse.” Nearly 57 per-
cent of Ohrstrom’s space is dedicated to housing a
circulating collection of books and non-print materials,
Changing the
landscape
PHOTO: PETER FINGER
