The Oca (2022) on Roosevelt Island, is an outdoor reading room for the Child's School, an elementary school for children with special needs, constructed with students from the New York Institute of Technology School of Architecture. Located in the middle of the East River in New York City, the project sits in the courtyard of the Westview Coop building designed by Jose Luis Sert. The design was inspired by the Oca, a traditional Brazilian indigenous one room multi-use structure. By using highly textured materials like Corten, Cedar and Bamboo our goal was to create an architecture that favored the sense of touch over the visual. Images by Sean Davidson