Wilson Secondary School | BIG-Bjarke Ingels
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The new Wilson Secondary School expands and relocates two existing county-wide secondary programs in a new building. Located in a dense urban context along Arlington’s urban Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor, the school is designed across multiple levels in order to maintain open green space for recreation.
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BIG’s design seeks to maintain the feeling of a 1-story school building while still having a vertical organization and the efficiencies afforded by it. The building is designed as a series of classroom bars rotated along a single hinge point. The rotation creates cascading green terraces leading from the educational spaces of the school to the athletic field. Beneath the rotated classroom bars is a pair of large public levels with varying ceiling heights. The large and public functions of the building, including auditorium and gymnasium, are placed on these levels and accessible from the main street front, Wilson Boulevard.
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Project Info:
Architects: BIG-Bjarke Ingels
Location: Arlington, Virginia, USA
Code: WILS
Date: 08/10/2015
Program: Education
Status: In Progress
Size in m2: 15800
Project type: Commission
Client: Arlington Public Schools
Collaborators: Leo A Daly, Silman, Interface Engineering, Gordon, Theater Projects, Jaffee Holden, Faithful & Gould, GHD, Hopkins Food Service, GeoConcepts, Haley Aldrich, Sextant, Tilitson Design Associates, EHT Traceries, Lerch Bates
Courtesy of © BIG
PROJECT TEAM
Partners in Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Daniel Sundlin, Thomas Christoffersen
Project Manager: Sean Franklin
Project Designer: Ji-young Yoon
Project Architect: Adam Sheraden
Team: Amina Blacksher, Anton Bashkaev, Aran Coakley, Beat Schenk, Bennett Gale, Benson Chien, Cadence Bayley, Cristian Lera, Daisy Zhong, Deborah Campbell, Domenic Schmid, Douglass Alligood, Eva Maria Mikkelsen, Evan Rawn, Ibrahim Salman, Jan Leenknegt, Janice Rim, Jin Xin, Ku Hun Chung, Mateusz Rek, Maureen Rahman, Pablo Costa, Ricardo Palma, Romea Muryn, Simon David, Tammy Teng, Terrence Chew, Terry Lallak, Tony Saba-Shiber, Valentina Mele, Ziad Shehab
Isabelle Laurent is a Built Projects Editor at Arch2O, recognized for her editorial insight and passion for contemporary architecture. She holds a Master’s in Architectural Theory from École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville. Before joining Arch2O in 2016, she worked in a Paris-based architectural office and taught as a faculty adjunct at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. Isabelle focuses on curating projects around sustainability, adaptive reuse, and urban resilience. With a background in design and communication, she brings clarity to complex ideas and plays a key role in shaping Arch2O’s editorial