With the goal of reimagining a vibrant learning environment for middle schoolers, the Junior High/Ella Ness Arts Center is a renovation project that builds on the momentum of our previous project, the Bundrant Ness STEM Center.
Housing fine and performing arts along with the Junior High program, the design radically blows open a previously dark and isolating space, creating links between academic practice and the arts through a four-story, central-circulation core that visibly and physically connects learners across the curricular spectrum. With daylighting as a central feature of the structure, bright light serves as metaphor for the curiosity and joy that happens in the space.