Situated within the labyrinth of spaces comprising The Juilliard School at Lincoln Center, this project reconfigures Juilliard's Drama Division. The extraordinary density of the existing 1965 Pietro Belluschi building – a density that is institutional, programmatic, and formal – has created a vast beehive of spaces, each striving to shoulder the others out of the way in an architectural survival-of-the-fittest struggle. Our mandate was to provide legibility and improve efficiency without adding space.

Rather than inserting yet another autonomous cell in this dense matrix, our proposal creates a set of compound figures that tether hallways to lounges, offices to reception areas, and classrooms to entry vestibules. The compound figure exploits the overlaps, tangencies, and alignments of floors, walls, and ceilings to aggregate program areas and circulation systems. Floors and walls combine to suggest one set of partial enclosures; ceilings and floors create another; and walls and ceilings another. The result is a set of spaces that revel in the after-effects of density: rooms are not merely pushed up against one another but instead overlap, engage, and cohabitate with one another.

The architecture is made up of three components: 1) A corkscrew-like surface (yellow) that spirals from floor to wall to ceiling, creating pockets of space as it makes its way along the primary axis of the third and fourth floors; 2) A linear ribbon (orange) that winds its way through each level, forming a bench in the third floor student lounge and changing areas, and a storage system for the administrative level on the fourth floor; and 3) Ceiling pods (white) that hold lighting and mechanical systems. Collectively, these three components create a series of spaces that are not so much "rooms" as they are nested, lapped, and aggregated relationships.