School for Leadership | kirstencowan

Portfolio Project: Leadership School in Urban Cambridge

Southwest isometric This line rendering, produced with Revit, shows that the overall form of the school foregrounds a separate volume for the auditorium, serving as a marquee for the community-centered aspects of the program.	Elevation facing retail street Outdoor spaces and daylighting are created in three moves: pulling the auditorium forward, carving the forecourt garden downward, and raising the first academic level above grade. This enables light to reach the gym and incubator in the basement, and creates a sheltered courtyard overlooking the Old Burial Ground to the east.	Analysis of context The Leadership School's site is in a dense urban area, surrounded by commercial hubs, small-scale residential buildings, and the Harvard campus. These rich resources and potential participants are accommodated with a combined high/school community center in which learning takes place in the community and vice versa.
Border conditions At each face of the site, there are different conditions: small-scale historic residential; institutional; retail/restaurants; and the 400-year old cemetery. This called for an approach that responded in kind, while respecting the need for privacy and quiet for the school's academic functions versus more openness for its community functions.	Addressing the context In materiality, the school responds to its different neighbors and to functional needs of the interior spaces, with a façade that traces a gradient from opaque to transparent.	Context model Developing a quick model of the immediate context ensures that the massing and height of the school is sensitively handled with respect to the site.
Fitting form to program and site Sketch models enable a quick and free exploration of form. The questions to be answered included: how to bring daylight into the interior without sacrificing floor space, and how to modulate the form with sensitivity to the context of small-scale historic buildings? Finally, how to embody leadership and modernity without defaulting to orthogonal boxes?	Street level The community functions are accessed through the auditorium volume at street level, whereas students walk a ramp to a more controlled entrance set back from the street. A linear courtyard to the right, between the two volumes, enables a view corridor through to the previously-hidden historic cemetery to the east.	Additional plans Purely academic functions are clustered to the rear and upper sections of the building. Shared-use functions that are available to the public are grouped near busy retail street facade and lower levels.
Detail model of auditorium To advertise the school’s presence and availability to the public, a “marquee” space was created, meant to intrigue passersby. The steeply-raked auditorium is inspired by Victorian operating theaters; this form makes for an intimate meeting space in which all participants can interact easily. ADA compliant-access was resolved with a series of intricate, branching stairs.	School stairwell/lightwell The main student access stair provides a clear line of sight from the front academic entrance to the top floor, and doubles as a lightwell with translucent polycarbonate roof. Extensive materials research derived the skin and partial roof of translucent polycarbonate which is effective at preventing heat gain, while allowing the volume to glow at night.	North-south section The school offers a mix of experiences in section, avoiding a stacked, repetitive effect. The gym and incubator were fitted into two stories below grade, with the street level raised to permit clerestories into those spaces.

Click the thumbnail images to move through this project. Mouse-over the upper image for a text description, or click on the upper image to see a full-sized version.

Charged with creating a magnet high school in a tight urban site, the school's program was pushed above and beyond this call by making it a community center as well. Geared towards that subset of teenagers who have a longing to make a difference, but who don't yet know what form that may take, the Leadership School is predicated on intense involvement with the community resources that surround it. The school's materiality and form must therefore accommodate a tension between security and accessibility, and between introversion and extroversion.

Portfolio Project: Leadership School in Urban Cambridge

Southwest isometric

This line rendering, produced with Revit, shows that the overall form of the school foregrounds a separate volume for the auditorium, serving as a marquee for the community-centered aspects of the program.

Elevation facing retail street

Analysis of context

Border conditions

Addressing the context

In materiality, the school responds to its different neighbors and to functional needs of the interior spaces, with a façade that traces a gradient from opaque to transparent.

Context model

Developing a quick model of the immediate context ensures that the massing and height of the school is sensitively handled with respect to the site.

Fitting form to program and site

Street level

Additional plans

Purely academic functions are clustered to the rear and upper sections of the building. Shared-use functions that are available to the public are grouped near busy retail street facade and lower levels.

Detail model of auditorium

School stairwell/lightwell

North-south section

The school offers a mix of experiences in section, avoiding a stacked, repetitive effect. The gym and incubator were fitted into two stories below grade, with the street level raised to permit clerestories into those spaces.