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ArchDC Spring 2018.qxp_Fall 2017 2/22/18 9:12 AM Page 39

View through the various levels of the atrium.

But it’s what comes next that is the real surprise. The of Woodrow Wilson High School (see the Spring 2013
gallery flows directly to the building’s enormous four-story, issue of ARCHITECTUREDC). Looking down from the
glass-topped atrium dominated by a suspended “egg” floors above, one sees the Ellington atrium brimming
containing the 850-seat theater. In an engineering tour de with students, conversation, and activity; looking up into
force, this egg, mounted on five piers and accessed from the glassy studios and rehearsal rooms above, one clearly
all floors by skywalks, appears to hover above the floor of sees young artists and performers practicing their crafts.
the atrium and cafeteria like an object in space. Constructed This central space is the “heart and soul of Ellington,”
of hand-troweled Venetian plaster over three layers of according to Graae. And lest anyone forget, the black-
curved drywall, the theater structure is supported by a and-white tile flooring of the atrium’s cafeteria boasts a
frame of bridge-grade structural steel. Graae and Ambridge large portrait of the school’s eponymous jazz icon.
described the complex computer-driven collaboration In fact, the black-and-white color scheme throughout
between the design team and highly creative construction the building is attributed to one of the school’s founders,
and materials contractors that resulted in pre-fabricated the late Peggy Cooper Cafritz, who urged the restrained
“egg” pieces that were assembled onsite. palette as a suitable backdrop for the vibrant art and
“Chris was the engine of this design,” said Graae, sculpture yet to come. In 1974, while a junior at George
referring to Ambridge. The two architects sought to create Washington University, Ms. Cooper Cafritz co-founded a
in this project the same kind of place-making, central summer arts program that grew into the Duke Ellington
gathering space that distinguished their 2011 renovation School. She later went on to become a long-serving DC

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