Renovation and Expansion of Wannan Gym at Sidwell Friends School - 2014 National High School Architecture Competition - Nikhil Chaudhuri

05/03/14
In my meeting with Mr. Sawyer, I learned a lot about the Sidwell campus. He explained to me that the campus laid out along two axes, as shown above. Looking at the Google Earth image above, you can see that Wannan Gym is essentially at the convergence of those two axes. This begged the question, if Wannan is the convergence of axes, a focal point, then why is it a large, uninviting brick structure - an obstacle? This question would become the foundation for my entire design (as you will see in the next steps of the process).