Brooklyn Prospect Charter School is a free public middle school and high school serving its Brooklyn, New York community. The charter school structure allows this independently operated non-profit organization flexibility in administrative procedure, school scheduling and teacher development and retention. This represents a significant departure from the New York City public school structure. The curriculum of the school adopts the International Baccalaureate program’s holistic approach to learning which helps students to make connections across subject areas and develop a vision of themselves as members of a global community. An advisory program allows each student to meet daily with a faculty mentor to develop literacy and study skills. To reflect this program, classrooms and administrative areas are interspersed affording a proximity between students and faculty atypical of school layouts. The location of the school in an former warehouse building in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park district, necessitated a vertical stacking of the program. As the middle school and high school are distinct entities, separate circulation for each school through the other is required. Glass enclosed stairs through generous common zones produce another opportunity for the perceived extension of each school into a broader context. Shared programs between the schools such as art and science classrooms are located at the base of the circulation stairs. A grand seating stair at the entry acts as an all-school assembly area and leads up to the outdoor gymnasium. New construction includes this gymnasium clad in metal grating and a glass box enclosed entry ramp and stair. The school logo is cut into the planted metal grating and screened onto the glass box for a super-graphic representation.