At George Washington University’s new Milken Institute School of Public Health, the central atrium is a primary feature. One recent graduate likened it to the “Hogwarts stairs” from the Harry Potter series.
The central atrium integrates the administrative and teaching halves of the building. This enables workspaces deep within the building’s core to receive natural daylight, which falls from a skylight opening in the penthouse level to the basement floor 8 stories below, and reduces the need for artificial light. The extensive use of glass walls and open galleries around the atrium openings affords an array of views across, up and down through the different floor levels. Less than 20-feet wide in most places, the central atrium is intimate enough for conversations between occupants to occur from one side to another, and from floor to floor.
The 2025 OpenLAB Boston studio work will be exhibited at Virginia Tech Monday, March 2nd through Wednesday, March 4th.
Please join us for the following events on Monday, March 2nd:
11:00am - Lecture with Parke MacDowell
1:00pm Lobby talk with Kevin Sullivan
This year’s studio identifies seven sites along the frayed edges of Boston’s Greenway. The Greenway is a one-mile-long linear park running through the heart of the city, reconnecting downtown Boston with its waterfront. Many of the parcels along its edges remain undeveloped and present mute, blank facades to the public realm. Addressing and repairing these edges through acts of infilling, layering, grafting, framing, and placemaking is the core focus of the studio—SUTURE.