The Tree Trace is an office and exhibition space for the faculty of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI). The building occupies the boundary between the forest and the open courtyard on its site at the Montgomery Campus of Bard College.

The building’s footprint is an offset from the Tree Trace, a line drawn on the site along the edge of the forest. The Office wing is 18’ deep, and the Gallery wing is 40’. Facing the forest, the Office wing features floor to ceiling curtain wall, allowing the Bard faculty to maintain a relationship with nature throughout the work day, with dappled light filtered through the forest in the evening. The bullpen style portion of the office features courtyard facing 8’ tall operable windows to provide natural air and ventilation.

In the Gallery wing, a cracked glass facade system was developed in relation to the branching language of the forest. Eastern morning light plays with the shadows of the irregular steel members and the branches of the trees, as it fills the gallery space. The sloping roof which began at 12’ in the south at the staff entrance, has risen to a maximum of 32’ in the gallery, and descends back down to 17’ in the northeast gallery corner.

This building incorporates strategies such as Building Integrated roof panels, as well as heated slab floors via Geothermal wells to bring its energy usage close to net zero.