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A $26 million project of this scale requires a rare level of intentionality. When Shady Side Academy set out to design a new home for grades six through eight, they weren’t just constructing a building to hold 240 students. They were actively rethinking what middle school space should do.
The resulting 50,000-square-foot facility brings the middle school campus side-by-side with the senior school on Fox Chapel Road, fundamentally changing how the Academy interacts as one community. But a larger, more open footprint brings a unique challenge: how do you ensure that your educational vision actually translates into the physical environment? Too often, schools invest millions into beautiful new buildings, only for the spaces to fall short of driving real instructional impact once the doors open.
To prevent that disconnect, Kay-Twelve partnered with Shady Side Academy from the perspective of a Learning Space Integrator (LSI). Our role went far beyond delivering furniture or coordinating installation logistics with Strada LLC and PJ Dick. As an LSI, we were responsible for ensuring that the Academy’s true learning intent wasn’t lost between the architectural planning and the final implementation.
To support a curriculum rooted in collaboration, movement, and student agency, every furniture choice had to be an intentional extension of the school’s teaching models. Through our Radically Student Centered™ approach, we worked to ensure that the interior spaces were built around how middle schoolers actually learn and grow:
The Second-Floor Classrooms: To maximize these generous layouts, we translated the school’s instructional goals into high-mobility furniture strategies. Every desk and chair can be effortlessly rearranged on the fly, allowing a room to instantly pivot from a centralized lecture setup to decentralized, small-group project hubs.
The Hubs & “Think Tanks”: Learning doesn’t stop when the bell rings. We activated the building’s open breakout spaces with comfortable, agile seating and adaptable work surfaces, creating functional zones where student teams can brainstorm and solve problems together between classes.
The Makerspace & Tech Hub: Hands-on STEM learning demands durability without sacrificing flexibility. We provided robust, high-impact workstations engineered to handle creative, tech-heavy projects while keeping the environment open and collaborative.
The Central Commons & Dining: The double-height dining hall and library are the social anchors of the school. The seating and tables here were carefully scaled specifically for middle school learners, creating a welcoming environment that supports both high-energy lunch periods and quiet independent study.
Transition Zones: Because the hallways were intentionally designed wider than traditional standards to reduce congestion, we used strategic furniture placements to turn these corridors into “learning porches”—giving students the physical space and the right environments to pause and connect with confidence.
Ensuring a space functions as intended over time requires staying deeply involved through the messy execution phases of a major build. Navigating a mid-year opening on an ambitious 16-month timeline meant managing the complex intersections of manufacturer lead times, layout sequencing, and shifting construction milestones.
Because we operate as an LSI, we don’t just drop off boxes and walk away. We bridged the gap between the building’s structural completion and its educational activation. The moment the second-floor finishes, flooring, and lockers were completed by the general contractor, our teams moved in to seamlessly execute the layout strategies we’d spent months planning.
Backed by a historic $15 million gift from S. Kent Rockwell ’62 and Pat Babyak, this solar-powered, LEED-designed facility is built to endure. But without the intentional integration of instructional intent and physical design, even the most innovative spaces risk becoming static over time.
By anchoring this project in a shared learning direction from the start, Rockwell Middle School is fully equipped to remain adaptable, relevant, and student-centered for generations to come. Walking through the doors and seeing the students take immediate, confident ownership of these spaces is a powerful reminder of what happens when a school’s physical environment is perfectly aligned with its educational culture.
