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Cascading terraces with staircase.

“The parti was also great for programmatic
needs,” noted Aran Coakley, AIA, project manager
and associate with BIG’s New York office. Most
classrooms, science labs, and the library are located
in the rotated bars, where many of them enjoy direct
connections to the roof terraces. The geometrically
irregular junctures between the bars create intriguing
circulation and gathering spaces encouraging casual
interaction among students and teachers.
The stepped form allows for what the architects
call “big box” spaces of different heights on the ground
floor, including gymnasiums and the main auditorium,
which are appropriately accessible to parents and the
general public visiting for games or performances.
The ground level also includes most of the spaces
earmarked for the intellectually challenged students
enrolled in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Program, such
as dedicated classrooms and suites for occupational
and physical therapy. The basement includes a second,
“black box” theater along with related costume and
prop spaces and a film/photo studio.
The pivoting form, with the resulting cantilevers
and the eccentric loads they create, required a good
bit of structural bravura. Most anyone who passed
by the site during construction would have been
impressed by the heroically scaled steel trusses
framing the rotated bars, whose projecting corners are
supported in part by “floating buttresses.” The bars
are anchored to a three-dimensional vertical truss
at the pivot point that resists the inherent torsional

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