This Ann Arbor middle school achieves more than education with its program and form, seeking to also culture a program of health as a critical aspect to a child’s development. Set adjacent to the city’s rail line, the school acts as a physical threshold between the local neighborhood and the dense downtown, but also as a threshold for a crucial period of a child’s life. Focusing on motion, both physically and mentally, and engagement, with the school itself and the surrounding environment, the formal drivers of the school begin with shifting, layering, and branching. As a critic of the unthoughtful design behind many educational facilities, HEALTH AS A PROGRAM acknowledges architecture’s influence over and serious responsibility for a child’s education with a thoughtful design encouraging healthy, intelligent students while also offering them the freedom they need to become their own individuals.