The Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York is celebrating its 30th anniversary with an ambitious plan to build a new building made of old shipping containers—the site’s first permanent structure. The building, designed by LOT-EK, will house education and art making activities, exhibitions, and provide space for staff offices. The project itself repurposes and expands an earlier shipping container structure originally installed in the sunken garden in 2012 at the former Whitney Museum building, now known as the Met Breuer.

As the Whitney prepared to move to their new Renzo Piano-designed home downtown, the institution approached Socrates Sculpture Park about a donation of the LOT-EK structure, which had been used as a classroom. “The donation really jumpstarted a long-held desire for a building in the park,” says John Hatfield, the park’s executive director. In fact, Hatfield had long considering using shipping containers, already existing on site, and even asking LOT-EK to design the structure.