Weeksville Education Building
Caples Jefferson Architects PC

The Weeksville Education Building is a new building with an interpretive landscape to aid in the appreciation of an African-American heritage site. The need for further development and expansion of the site and its programming culminated in the Master Plan for Historic Weeksville which called for the restoration of the historic houses and the subsequent development of a New Educational Building and Interpretive Landscape to facilitate educational and public programs for school children, adults, and families who visit the site. The building uses sustainable principles, both ancient and modern, to create a fully naturally lit and ventilated LEED Gold structure.

In response to the site, a few parameters were set up as a basis for our architectural intentions.
The building faces the 19th century homes of the Brooklyn ‘ancestors,’ and counterposes an african-inspired alternation of enclosed pods for program with transparent view slots to the historic houses. The southern slot twists along an old farm road that was the original setting for the freemen’s homesteads.

The site is configured to unfold from the building into two organizing elements: the historic road, and the "great lawn" graded toward the building lower level. Both Hunterfly Road and the lawn are an extension of the building's internal circulation; together they form the circulation loop along which site programming and occupancy are situated.

The journey through the site affords its visitors the opportunity for present evaluation and the gift of discovery; it evokes a sense of discovery as a sense of renewal that connects us to an ancient and timeless reality of an ancestral past.

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