College of The Atlantic, Kaelber Hall
Bar Harbor, ME.
Following the College of the Atlantic master planning work in the 1980s, our next task was to establish a core architecture for the campus. We needed to establish an architectural scale and quality, as equal to that of the nearby 19th century Turrets Building, but with a more limited, more modern budget We designed the new $3 million campus center building, including the new library and dining hall, that embraced its landscape and established a solid building basis for the College of the Atlantic campus. Kaelber Hall utilizes several energy efficient strategies, including day lighting and heat recovery from the ventilation systems. At the dedication of Kaelber Hall it was said that:
Kaelber Hall creates a great gate for this College, a gate that opens out to the world as a whole, to the incomparable Maine landscape, the rockbound landscape of the sea and those hard, mounded hills that rise across the Bay. It seems to me, that gate –that opening- is an appropriate kind of beginning for this great institution, which is concerned with the preservation of the environment as a whole, not only for mankind, but for all the creatures of the earth, and especially here for those at the edge of the land and the sea.