spaces in the city, worked out with precision and joy. From the beautifully articulated ceiling and floating roof, with their wonderfully rich penetrations, directionality and sense of flight, to the sensuous concrete wainscoting, the complex and rich interplay of natural and artificial illumination and the lovely parquet on the floor, the room is not only a superb site for communal celebration, but a clear cause for one. This is an elevating space, so far from the reclaimed church basement or gym that typically serves for the kinds of gatherings it will soon support.

The siting of the building and the articulation of the spaces around its perimeter are also remarkably urbane. Saratoga sits with great conviction on the street and links the slab on one side with an existing commercial building on the other, to form an ensemble that feels completely natural. Rather than diminishing its neighbors by creating a sense of anomalous quality, Saratoga enhances them by sharing the authority of its articulation generously. This is the result both of the way Saratoga works within a familiar universe of materiality and proportion and the way in which it is the fulcrum for the reorganization of the irregular block on which it sits with its neighbors. Ranalli rearticulates the conditions of entry to the slab and gives its displacement from the street, an urban logic it did not previously possess.

This is a particular revelation. Ranalli has brought the slab into a truly singular and complex relationship with its extended context that yields a fascinating hybrid. No longer enslaved by the tower-in-the-park parti, the slab becomes part of an articulated perimeter that both holds the street and opens up into a series of small public spaces. These modulate access and provide useful intermediaries between the buildings and the street, a group of small outdoor public rooms. The ensemble has a clear front and back, two very different