The Heights is a 180,000-square-foot public school in Arlington, Virginia, designed by BIG | Bjarke Ingels Group with LEO A DALY as executive architect. Completed in 2019, the building merges two county-wide programs — the H-B Woodlawn Program and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Program — into a unified educational setting. Situated along the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor and adjacent to Rosslyn Highlands Park, the project establishes a vertical learning community within a dense urban context.
The Heights has been awarded LEED Gold certification, underscoring its commitment to high-performance design and sustainable construction.
Spatial strategy
The building is conceived as a stack of five rectangular floorplates that rotate around a central pivot. This composition maintains the efficiencies of a single-story school while vertically layering diverse programs within a compact site. Each level extends outward as a green terrace, providing outdoor classrooms and communal areas. The terraces create a varied topography that supports both quiet study and large-scale activities, including an 18,700-square-foot recreation field used for school and neighborhood events.
Community and academic life
From Wilson Boulevard, students, staff, and visitors enter through a triple-height lobby with stepped seating that doubles as an indoor amphitheater for assemblies and community gatherings. Around this civic core are the auditorium, gymnasium, cafeteria, and library, underscoring the building’s role as a center of community life.
Classroom wings are arranged around the central core and distinguished by color, combining intuitive wayfinding with a lively atmosphere. Specialized spaces include art studios, science and robotics labs, rehearsal rooms, and performance theaters. The Shriver Program, which provides specialised education for students with disabilities, is housed on two accessible levels with tailored facilities — including therapy suites, a courtyard, and a sensory cottage — that ensure privacy while supporting functional life skills education.
Materiality and facade design
The building’s exterior is clad in white glazed brick, unifying the stacked volumes while referencing the masonry traditions of Old Town Alexandria. Transparency is introduced through high-performance curtain wall systems: a unitized system designed for expansive glass spans and a stick-built system adapted for detailed conditions.
Sustainability and performance
Sustainability at The Heights extends across embodied, operational, and service dimensions. Daylighting and natural ventilation reduce reliance on artificial systems, while high-performance glazing minimises heat gain and lowers energy use. The facade employs a combination of unitized curtain wall for large glass spans and a stick-built system for more detailed assemblies, enabling precise carbon accounting and alignment with LEED benchmarks.
The modularity of these elements also supports long-term efficiency: components can be selectively replaced, reducing maintenance impacts and lifecycle emissions. The flexible organisation of the floorplates further anticipates adaptation, allowing the school to evolve with future educational needs and community uses.
The Heights demonstrates how architecture can unite academic inclusivity, civic engagement, and environmental performance in an urban school.
