Nestled into a hillside campus, structures at the Potomac School – an independent private day school in McLean, Virginia – share a common vocabulary of stone, stucco, glass and wood. In design of a new indoor athletic facility there, it was essential that the building bring in the lush setting and as much natural light as possible.
 
“A healthy building needs natural light,” says architect Ken Wiseman, design principal at Cannon Design. “The building was going to be on a spectacular site, but we had to find a way to bring the light in, and we wanted a very clean façade overall.” Turning to an innovative, sustainable solution, the design team selected the UniQuad® Translucent Wall System.
 
The athletic facility is sunk in the ground to achieve proper scale. A narrow band of glass wraps the building near ground level, topped by 4,500 square feet of UniQuad translucent walls on three sides, rising to a height of 30 feet.