WXY’s Expansion at a Prestigious Private School in New York Points to a Sustainable Future

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Packer acquired the Garden House, a small townhouse on the south edge of campus, in the late 1880s. Over the years, this annex on the far side of the school’s courtyard variously served as the president’s residence, classrooms, and administration offices. In 2021, in the midst of a pandemic that caused the institution to reevaluate its facilities, not only in terms of their capacity but their affordance as social infrastructure, Packer commissioned WXY to produce a new master plan. An expansion of the Garden House that would connect with the rest of the school, form the eastern edge of the courtyard, and accommodate first through fourth grades emerged in tandem with the research and planning process. The plan identified sustainability, wellness, and landscape as priorities.

The entrance to the extension is through the new courtyard. Photo © Albert Vecerka / Esto, click to enlarge.

WXY renovated the townhouse and designed a mass-timber structure that occupies the “backyard” and replaces a narrow bay that housed the original stairs. This set back 13-foot-wide bump-out—a simple but handsome composition of vertical oak shutters and brick holding the corner—contains flexible breakout spaces, reading rooms, and offices. It is the extension’s only street frontage, and it’s easily overlooked. Repeating the same layout on each floor, from the lookout basement for first grade to the fourth graders on top, a single-loaded corridor places new classrooms on the courtyard side, allowing for ample afternoon sunlight and visual connection to the lush plantings. The primary entry is now also through the garden, over a small bridge, and is marked by an arch, which pops out as a rounded portico and is made of the same mixed-tone, recycled-material bricks as the rest of the 115-foot-long west facade.

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The architects renovated the existing house (1) and added the extension behind it (2). Photos © Albert Vecerka / Esto

“Packer has always centered on a garden landscape,” says WXY cofounder Claire Weisz. As part of the master plan, the courtyard was redesigned by New York–based landscape architects Starr Whitehouse to accommodate the playground and basketball court, green space with a 90 percent proportion of native plants, as well as a new ADA-accessible route for the school. The orientation toward the garden is part of WXY’s ecological philosophy. “We wanted students to experience sustainability,” notes Weisz, “and that had a lot to do with wellness, mental health, students’ relationships, and social impact.” This emphasis on experienced sustainability as a part of students’ overall well-being continues through the interiors.

The architects point to studies showing that visible natural materials reduce stress and enhance students’ focus. What the photography of the interiors can’t capture, however, is the smell of the exposed timber, which certainly has a calming effect. In fact, the photos of the expansion don’t really do it justice at all: with its light gray flooring and goat-hair carpets in muted tones, its exposed wood grain and red brick, all basking in natural light, is the school missing the playful vibrance one might expect in a facility for young children? Are these classrooms for the type of kids who’ve seen more Werner Herzog documentaries than episodes of PAW Patrol? Not at all. The mature palette that seems so prominent is merely a neutral backdrop for the teachers and students to make the spaces their own through craft and art projects, posters and bubble-letter cutouts, beanbag chairs on foam puzzle-piece floor tiles under warm reading lamps. The difference between the images and the reality of the post-occupancy mise-en-scène couldn’t be starker. This sensibility, allowing for adaptability and accommodating needs by treating the architecture as a modest armature for everyday life, is a defining feature of the architects’ work.

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The extension connects physically and visually to the rest of the campus (5 & 6). Photos © Albert Vecerka / Esto

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While WXY’s addition to the Packer campus fits in contextually, it is distinct in terms of its ambitions. Unlike the Gothic and Romanesque buildings’ revival of history to imbue prestige, the Modernist structure’s emphasis on unadorned efficiency, or the Postmodern connector’s ironic iconoclasm, the Garden House extension points to an optimistic ecological future. It is an architecture that, while rooted in history and place, embraces a connection with nature for young generations who will write the next chapters of Packer’s legacy. As Weisz explains, “We’re hoping the students feel that they are sustainability, that they are tomorrow.”

Image courtesy WXY Architecture + Urban Design

Image courtesy WXY Architecture + Urban Design