the lantern
2025
Project team: Jeremy Anker, Nathan Nguyen, Olivia Nunamaker, Alex Poff, & Brigid Elrod
YSoA Jim Vlock Building Project
950 sf dwelling for an early childhood educator & 600 sf community center within Friend Center for Children Teachers Village
In Quaker beliefs the phrase “to hold in the light” refers to holding someone in positive thoughts and seeking guidance for them. We designed the community center to act as this guiding principle for the Friends Center Teachers Village, which provides free housing to early childhood educators.
Sited on a steep slope between three existing homes and one future home, we prioritized a petite footprint respectful of neighbors’ sightlines and creation of an indoor/outdoor commons. Responsive to the dual program, we developed distinct gradations of privacy in the two-story dwelling. Through landforming we designed direct backyard access for the dwelling with the communitiy center tucked below.
We created tactile collage tools such as bean bags of programmatic volumes and site photo cutouts to situate the structure on the slope and to iterate on sightlines and privacy gradients. Following concept design work in our group of 5 and selection of the scheme by the Friend Center for Children, the first year M.Arch cohort of 62 students and faculty collaborated on the final design and construction of the home over the summer.
image credit: Olivia Nunamaker
model design leads: Jeremy Anker & Nathan Nguyen
image credit: Yale School of Architecture