TUTORING CENTER
NEW YORK, NY
2025
PHOTOGRAPHY: FRANK OUDEMAN
This project is a gut renovation and expansion transforming a historic Upper East Side building into a contemporary space for education and philanthropy.
Originally designed by Calvert Vaux for the Children’s Aid Society, we preserved building’s historic form while adapting it for its new use.
The design creates the first office headquarters for the tutoring company and philanthropy, including areas for instruction and independent study.
It solves the puzzle of fitting 40 tutoring offices, classrooms, conference rooms, a cafeteria, boardroom, administrative offices, and a philanthropic wing into the building while maintaining a sense of spaciousness and clarity.
A stone and bronze stair rises behind a custom-designed screenwall in the reception area, leading to the tutoring spaces and offices above.
On the second floor, what was originally an unused rooftop was enclosed in fourteen foot tall, fire-rated glass panels, creating new space for a cafeteria and several additional offices. Green roofs and a large skylight top the new enclosure.
Tutoring offices on the upper floors incorporate the idiosyncrasies of the historic building’s design, like its eyebrow windows.
The boardroom on the top floor expresses the complex pitches of the roof…
… as does the director’s office
An ornamental stair rail seen through glass lends pattern and texture to the space
