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The classroom floats over the first-floor lecture hall, while the seminar room hovers above the lounge. Transparent and filled with light, they are ingeniously isolated from the rest of the volume with glass inserts framed into the roof's heavy timber structure.

Inside these rooms is the gutsy, architectonic presence of the trusses, just overhead. By using glass instead of an opaque partition, Kite allows the original two-story volume of the gym to be clearly read. This also floods these new spaces with daylight from the building's original windows.

Because these new second-story spaces do not touch the original brick enclosing wall, the building's fenestration remains intact. Jamming a new floor structure into this building would have compromised the windows.

What impresses me most about this solution, and which in my opinion is a trait of all great architecture, is its simplicity and elegance. It provides more floor space but not at the expense of the building's original spatial character.

Michael J. Crosbie is editor-in-chief of Faith & Form, an associate with Steven Winter Associates, and a contributing editor to ArchitectureWeek.

The two-story lecture hall reveals the historic trusses above. Photo: Warren Jagger Photography The control room and acoustic panels float slightly off of the existing brick wall. Photo: Warren Jagger Photography An overhead canopy of perforated metal panels helps to project sound and define a seating area for smaller lecture groups. Photo: Warren Jagger Photography From the common lounge area, students can more fully appreciate the building's previous incarnation as a gymnasium. Photo: Warren Jagger Photography Entry into the lecture hall from the common. In the background is the photo of the old gym with its elevated running track. Photo: Warren Jagger Photography Truss detail visible from the second-floor seminar room. Photo: Warren Jagger Photography   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.