With classrooms located on the floors above the gym, the design and construction team faced the daunting structural challenge of stacking the upper floors over the long-span gym space below. Kimberly Murphy, partner at the project’s design architect ESKW/Architects, says the decision of where to place the gymnasium kept the more public spaces at the ground level, while the upper floors are focused on students and staff.

“Putting the gym on the ground floor really allows it to be the star of the building in a lot of ways, and it allowed the classroom to have some privacy away from that very highly public space,” she says. “The gym can have donors and visitors and all kinds of people come in.… We are inviting the public in. We are a community building. We want people to come and see the magic sauce of what’s going on inside this school.”

The charter school for more than 400 students in grades 9-12 will expose students to professions such as journalism, marketing, nutrition, physical rehab, psychology, business, law, finance, arena entertainment, food services, personal representation, design and data analysis.
Rendering by IMC Architecture

Long-Span Solution

ESKW/Architects and executive architect IMC Architecture worked with structural engineer CityScape Engineering to tackle the main challenge of the building—supporting the education spaces above the gym. The team developed an oversized truss structural system, featuring three supersize truss assemblies installed above the gym to support columns and bearing walls for the three levels above. The trusses are 12 ft high, with the longest one spanning over 92 ft.

Jonathan Imani, principal at IMC Architecture, says that the team knew from the start that incorporating the trusses into the design was the main challenge of the building. “No building in New York City could stand to lose 12 feet [of elevation],” adds Jonathan Imani, principal at IMC Architecture. “It was interesting how we worked this through.”

Ultimately, the design team was able to hide the system inside the walls and ceilings on the third floor. One truss was integrated into a hallway, while another was placed along an exterior wall that faced a small rooftop space above the gym. Those trusses required multiple penetrations for doors and windows.

The foundation includes spread footings and grade beams. The design also includes two sheer walls, two stairway cores and an elevator core that serve as part of the lateral load system.

The architectural team of ESKW/Architects and IMC Architecture, construction manager JV Construction & Consulting, structural engineer CityScape Engineering and general contractor Brisa Builders worked together to create a large, column-free space in the gym area.
Photo by Peter Wilk/Wilk Marketing Communications

Construction Challenges

With the design team’s structural solutions came additional construction challenges. The project is located at a busy intersection, creating logistical and staging challenges for the construction team. The team also had to consider transportation of the large steel members to the site. The design team worked with construction manager JV Construction & Consulting and general contractor Brisa Builders to find feasible ways to slice the steel members, transport them and install them.

Ultimately, the trusses were fabricated by Breton Steel in Quebec, with the top and bottom cords of each truss cut into two sections. The longest span included a splice that was about 54 ft long and 36 in. deep. The heaviest piece was 30,244 lb.

The team worked with the fabricator early in the project, which ultimately paid off when tariffs were imposed on Canadian steel. “We beat [the tariff deadline] by a couple of days,” says Jovana Villanueva, president of JV Construction & Consulting. “We planned it just in time.”

Villanueva says the team scheduled truss erection to take place on weekends to avoid interrupting individual and commercial weekday traffic. Trusses were installed using a Liebherr LTM 1250-5.1 crane, and streets were temporarily closed, as needed. A robust steel erection tower was also built to assist with installing and joining the steel members. The weight of the tower along with additional loads during installation required the design team to beef up the foundations just below the tower location.

With the structure complete, crews installed the concrete floors. Rather than large pours—traditionally a faster but more expensive option—crews installed precast concrete floor planks.

Steel staging towers were added to aid with installation of the long-span trusses.
Photo courtesy of CityScape Engineering

Honoring Tradition

For the exterior facade, designers chose a mix of brick masonry and concrete panels. The facade incorporates large, glazed areas of curtain wall, which the design team says “allow passersby to visually engage with activities taking place inside and remind students that they are part of a vibrant community.”

The building’s arched entrance is designed to reflect the look of a traditional field house design from the early 1900s. The brick facade aims to recall the designs of American schools from the 1920s and 1930s. Different colors of exterior brick masonry were specified to distinguish between the building’s public and private spaces. Public places on the lower levels, such as the gym, library and lobby, will have a traditional red brick color. At the classroom levels on the upper floors, a lighter colored brick was installed. The building’s exterior also uses gray panels to indicate the location of the gym and library/media center as well as to break up the massing of the building.

Angular glazing wraps around and above the main entrance, leading into the lobby. Angled brick walls surround the glazing system at the lobby as well as a sloped brick system that steps down toward the glazing. IMC identified a U.K.-based supplier, IG Masonry Support, which helped engineer the system as well as design and fabricate custom brackets that support the custom brick feature. The company’s manufacturing facilities are located in Poland, England and Wales. Adding to the international sourcing of materials, windows were manufactured in Germany and the Netherlands.

The gym features seven clerestory windows located 15 ft high on the north facade of the building. The window placement allows natural light in, but not direct sunlight that could affect players’ vision.

The building features a one-story cellar that will house the student dining center and full-service kitchen, a lounge, a weight training room as well as a dance room with a floating floor system and a recording room that are part of the school’s music program. Acoustics were a major consideration in the design since program spaces such as classrooms and a recording studio were located above and underneath the gymnasium.

The second floor features a partial footprint, as most of the gym occupies two levels. These levels house a lounge area with VIP seating for games and a multi-functional library with a media center and conference room. The executive director’s office, which will overlook the gym, and the staff lounge will also be located on this floor.

The third through fifth floors will primarily house 24 classrooms that average 650 sq ft each, plus offices, an art room and gender-neutral bathrooms. On the third floor, students can access an outdoor rooftop terrace.

While the first-of-its-kind school could serve as a future model for the nexus of sports and education, the design and construction team will also take away lessons from the project. Hadi Djohan, principal at CityScape Engineering, says he expects the use of long-span trusses could serve as an example for how the solution could be used on other projects that typically wouldn’t consider it.

“We had two other projects with a similar concept, but … they didn’t get built because the contractor was hesitant with the challenge,” he says. “I have to give credit to the contractor. While drawing it on paper isn’t easy, building it is even harder.”