In 2004, ARO won an invited competition to design a Performing Arts Center for the community of Weston, Connecticut. Weston Performing Arts Center is a facility designed to engage these two constituencies. In our design a metal shingle-clad wrapper surrounds the auditorium/fly-tower block, creating lobby space in which to experience the dynamic between civic and academic scales. The student entry connects to the existing school, emulating its scale. The public entry connects to the plaza and presents an iconic civic building. While students and public share a lobby, their experience of the theater is differentiated by the views they are afforded in their respective entry sequences. As students enter and move through the building, they understand the theater as well as its support spaces. This allows for the way the students move through the building to teach them about the theater’s operation. Views of the plaza and athletic fields in the distance foreground the middle school campus to the public as they approach the theater.