The First New Building in 60 Years
ACS is very excited to be expanding its campus footprint, with the construction of its first new and purpose-built building in over 60 years. The beautifully designed building will solve specific challenges that ACS faces because of the campus’ unique urban location.
The new building will house:
- Three large music rooms for the Elementary, Middle, and High Schools,
- Two Elementary School language classrooms for French and Arabic, and
- Four fifth grade classrooms.
- Two comfortable faculty apartments on each level from floors 4-11, the Head of School’s living space on floor 12.
- A new school entertainment space with a balcony overlooking the sea on floor 13.
- A roof terrace that will become a very popular ACS event space.
ACS established its presence in Ras Beirut in 1905 and 110 years later the school is very excited to be expanding its campus footprint. Today, ACS has embarked on a bold step in the construction of its first new and purpose-built building in over 60 years.
The beautifully designed building will solve specific challenges that ACS faces because of the campus’ unique urban setting, a location which is perfect in many ways, but challenging in others. The sub-basement will house the mechanicals, and the first level below ground will feature two beautiful music rooms for Middle and High School. These rooms will provide excellent space for band and vocal music, theory, and composition classes as well as attractive rehearsal and performance space. The ground floor has a small concierge apartment, a lobby for the faculty apartment elevators, and the Elementary School music room, giving us three music rooms in very close proximity and providing for collaboration amongst our music teachers. The first floor will provide us with two large language classrooms for Elementary French and Arabic. Floors two and three contain four state-of-the-art bright and airy fifth grade classrooms, allowing this top grade of the Elementary School to feel very special in their own new environment. All the academic space will be accessed through an external staircase as well as a separate elevator providing handicap access.
Additionally, there will be two faculty apartments on each level from floors 4 to 11. These will be very popular with our foreign hires, and they will save the school money as we will now have to rent far fewer apartments annually. A large attractive apartment for the Head of School’s family will occupy the 12th floor, and the 13th floor will be a school entertainment space with a kitchen, a dining room, a beautiful living room, and a balcony overlooking the sea. Finally, the roof will be divided between a mechanical side, that will house solar panels to produce hot water for all the apartments, and a terrace side that will feature a spacious roof deck with sea views and a built-in barbecue, ideal for all manner of school parties and for faculty residing in the building.
By moving fifth grade and the Head’s apartment out of the BD, the opportunity is created for the much-needed relocation of the High-School Science Labs, among other domino effects that lead to an exciting school-wide reorganization of space. Eventually, each division will have its own dedicated building, making students at home at ACS in ways that are presently not possible.