Located in Stuyvesant Square Historic District in New York, the Friends Seminary campus includes a historic meeting house, a 1963 classroom building and three townhouses constructed in 1852. Our team saved the historic townhouse facades, demolished remaining wood and brick structure, excavated new basements, built new floors to align with the floors of the adjoining classroom building and constructed two new floors with classroom space above the townhouse and classroom building. A narrow skylit gallery and exposed steel bracing separates the new building from the historic facades.

The project features an accessible entrance and lobby, a Great Room opening directly onto the central court, the Archive Room, a Music suite, Dance and Yoga suite, an Upper School Commons opening onto a rooftop terrace and community space, additional classrooms and offices, study and locker spaces, a rooftop greenhouse, and mesh enclosed play structure. The design team also worked with renowned artist James Turrel, a practicing Quaker who once worshipped at the meeting House on the Friends Seminary campus, to create one of his Skyspace installations within the renovated space.