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School for Qira'at

This project responds to a history of institutional violence. Willowbrook State School confined, classified, and experimented on children with disabilities for four decades on Staten Island. That history raises a question this project takes seriously: what does it look like to design for children who fall outside the standard? The project is sited in the South End of Staten Island, serving the borough’s Muslim children with learning disabilities and speech impairments. The endowment acquires two properties on Huguenot Avenue: an existing public library, preserved and expanded for the neighborhood, and across the street, a School of Music and Qiraʾat. The school is organized around a descending ramp, moving students through a sequence of acoustic chambers — absorbent rooms for precise articulation, echo chambers for rhythm and repetition — and culminating in a performance hall and prayer space where children lead, recite, and are heard. Every recitation carries sawab. A child who stutters, halts, and starts over is not failing. This building does not ask for perfection before it begins.