When the firms that designed the All School Commons—DIGSAU and Leslie Gill Architect—observed the Germantown Friends School Campus, they saw three thematic anchors that overlaid the built environment: the Mind, the Body, and the Spirit.

The Mind refers to the academic function of GFS with the Main Building as its epicenter. The Body is represented by the Scattergood Gym and the Field House on the North border of campus. The Meetinghouse is the spiritual center, where students have gathered for Meeting for Worship throughout the school’s long history.

In the midst of these iconic spaces, a new building rises, a Heart taking shape alongside the Mind, Body, and Spirit: The All School Commons.

This building, the first new construction on campus since 2009, will radically reshape how, where, and why the GFS community gathers. While The Commons is perhaps the most material and immediate pillar of the Picture This campaign, it also is the stage where the other pillars will play out: growing our Annual Fund, which makes so much exceptional teaching and programming possible; increasing GFS’ endowment for scholarship to support socioeconomic diversity; and endowing GFS’ community education programs.

And it’s more than just a beautiful new building (though, it is quite beautiful): it’s an expression of the school’s Quaker values and a symbol of faith in the future of the institution. All 40,000 square feet of The Commons were carefully and thoughtfully designed to reflect GFS’ mission and commitment to expanding and strengthening the many facets of its dynamic, diverse community.

From its very foundation, the All School Commons is powerful proof of the school’s dedication to the Quaker testimonies. As Jamie Unkefer, Principal at DIGSAU, noted, the decision to work with the existing structure of Smith Gym and the Loeb Performing Arts Center (versus tearing them down and starting over) exemplifies GFS’ fidelity to environmental sustainability and the Integrity and Stewardship testimonies.

“There’s a choice you make in every project: Do you reuse an existing building, or rip it down and build a new one?” Unkefer said. “The plan [for The Commons] was to reuse and repurpose the existing structures to get as much as possible out of them. That reflects the ideals of the school. And that’s not typical; it’s a lot of work to reuse a building—it’s not the easy path.”

The Commons will bring new life, he noted, to Smith and Loeb, both beloved, but previously underutilized, buildings on campus.

Architect Leslie Gill, whose firm partnered with DIGSAU on the project, posited that many of the building’s features, including the common spaces like the large, open Dining Hall, which now occupies the Smith Gym, have been designed to encourage community-building in lasting ways.

“One aspiration of Quaker design is asking: How do you enhance a space by welcoming other people in? With time, this building will allow a program like Breakthrough of Greater Philadelphia to include music, art, and movement,” Gill envisioned. “The space will allow populations to meet on a daily basis, different divisions, different faculty members who were formerly eating lunch in different parts of campus and didn’t know what each other were doing. The mind, body, and spirit come together.”

The new arched entryway facing Greene Street will also be instrumental in building new bridges between on- and off-campus communities.

“The All School Commons has a front door facing Greene Street, and a front door on the campus side,” Unkefer said. “This new passageway ties these two worlds together in a much more direct way.”

All of the facets of the building’s design illustrate the Quaker testimonies of Simplicity and Stewardship: the large and numerous windows that let light and views of nature in; the extensive sustainability features (like green roofs, electrified systems, low-flow plumbing fixtures, and air ventilation and filtration systems); and the use of natural building and furniture materials. To help articulate the aesthetic of the space, Gill surveyed various Quaker meetinghouses across the East Coast.

"As you move from the South through to the Northeast, the coloration tends to shift from a muted to a more vibrant palette," she observed. "In the All School Commons, I used color palettes that speak to the history of how Quakers adapted to different terrains and light sources, with colors of the Earth, like ochres, greens, reds, browns, and grays. In the furniture, we acknowledge the contemporary with more saturated colors."  

Gill noted that a willow oak tree that was removed in the building process was sent to The Challenge Program in Wilmington, Delaware, where youth receiving job training used the wood to build tables that will now live in the All School Commons.

“What’s unique about this building is that we’ve tied it to the philosophy and pedagogy of the school, and the Quaker tradition. It works on all levels,” Gill said.

The classrooms will help expand and animate GFS’ tradition of innovative teaching and learning. In the comfortable, open, and sunlight-filled classrooms, the arts and engineering, including digital media, photography, and theatre, will have fresh new spaces to continuously grow and thrive.

A less visible component of the Quaker values woven into the building design is the flexibility of the classrooms and spaces, purposefully built anticipating future-uses that may be necessary as the decades pass. Though GFS will always practice learning in community, what that looks like, and what might be needed to support it, will surely evolve.

“Programs and technology change all the time, so spaces that don’t have the limitations of highly specific functions are key,” Unkefer said. “If the building is not flexible, over time it won’t be as useful.”

Time is a profound element of architecture, and the All School Commons will exist on campus well into the future, for decades, possibly even centuries, after GFS’ youngest current students have graduated. It was designed and constructed to last.

“This is not a building that’s disposable, as a lot of contemporary buildings—and so much else in our culture—are,” Unkefer said. “I’d be disappointed if in a 100 years there weren’t GFS students still running around the space.”