Archives

1. Herman Miller Design Yard

   Completed in 1990, the complex incorporates modified prefabricated metal structures, silos, and houses, which were flexibly designed to accommodate changing uses and future expansion. Twenty-seven years after the Design Yard opened its doors, the complex is still living up to its original intent. The durable, low maintenance exteriors have aged gracefully. Open, flexible interior spaces have accommodated changes in how people work, as well as evolving technologies. The whole fits well into its rural environment and serves as an appropriate backdrop for Herman Miller’s classic modern pieces and new designs for furniture systems and products.

2. Louisville Free Public Library Southwest Regional Library

   The construction employs a standardized structural steel frame, similar to those used in big box retail stores. The library design focuses on creatively using common materials. Standardized components—including modular masonry, window systems, and raised flooring—form a low maintenance, highly flexible public place. Through scale and a glowing beacon bay, the building establishes a presence in a fragmented environment of scattered building types along a highway. The open, transparent interior offers inviting spaces for different generations of people to experience and clear site lines for service efficiency and enhanced interactions between library staff and customers.

   MSR Design collaborated with architect JRA Architects and landscape architect MKSK on the project.

3. Meridian Library District Orchard Park Branch

   This new community library is designed to create connections in the community with a focus on removing barriers to access and expanding all-inclusive services and programs. In response to a public input process and focus group sessions with parents and local educators, the design team developed a design that supports the needs of neurodivergent community members, going beyond merely providing a dedicated sensory space to creating a holistic library experience approach focused on sound, durability, lighting, extension of tactile surfaces, and ease of building use. The library serves as a family-oriented gathering and learning center designed to inspire creativity and a sense of purpose.

4. K.O. Lee Aberdeen Public Library

   As a new living room for the city, the new building inspires and serves the needs of the community as a center of creativity, research, and collaboration. Its linear configuration along 3rd Avenue reflects the predominantly Craftsman/Prairie style vernacular of the railroad depots located in Aberdeen. Because of the many railroad lines that ran through the city, creating spokes connected to a hub, the City of Aberdeen is nicknamed the “Hub City.” Located near the heart of where those railroad lines first converged more than 100 years ago, the new library links the past to the future, becoming another kind of community hub, designed to connect and enrich patrons for many generations.

   CO-OP Architecture served as executive architect on the project.

5. Eastman Nature Center

   The design integrates site, building, and exhibits in order to create a holistic visitor experience in the forest. A long southern facing glass facade brings in light, provides passive solar energy, and extends the exterior paths through the building from the understory on one end to the tree canopy on the other. An active solar array and a geothermal-based heating and cooling system provide much of the building’s energy needs. Operable windows provide ventilation and draw in the sounds and smells of the forest. Roof water feeds a pond to attract birds and animals for human observation.

6. Hennepin County Library–Maple Grove

   The seamless design fully integrates the library and park, while a lake provides renewable, hydrothermal energy for the building. The design integrates outdoor views and spaces (such as a reading porch) to create a strong inside-outside relationship and extend the experience beyond the library walls—connecting residents to information, the outdoors, and the larger community. The building was designed in accordance with the B3 State of Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines.

7. University of Minnesota Itasca Biological Station

   Located within Minnesota’s oldest state park and at the headwaters of the Mississippi River, the new campus center contains three labs, an auditorium, and a library space. The design breaks the form of the building into three gable-roofed parts to match the scale of the existing campus buildings. Conservation strategies dramatically reduce energy needs, and a geothermal system and photovoltaic solar array on the roof offset energy used by the building with a goal of approaching net zero energy.

8. Trolley Quarter Flats

   Located on the Wisconsin River on the edge of downtown, the site presented challenges. A dilapidated, but structurally-sound trolley shed and wood super-structure (used to lift carriages off the trolley platform for repairs), located on the site, were the last remnants of Wausau’s street trolley system, which operated from 1906 to 1940. Understanding the historic significance of these structures, the developer and design team preserved and incorporated them into the design. The 40-unit complex includes private outdoor areas for all dwelling units, private garden plots for each ground level unit, play and study areas for children inside and outside the building, community space for adults, and parking. It has served as a catalyst for further revitalization of the surrounding neighborhood and to strengthen Wausau’s downtown.

9. Pioneer Public Television Station

   This fully modern workplace and broadcast facility supports direct public participation in regional arts, politics, land stewardship, and other issues relevant to residents of southwest and west central Minnesota and portions of Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota by broadcasting locally-produced programs, as well as national PBS programming. The building’s masonry exterior provides a visual connection to the geography, color, and texture of the adjacent Blue Devil Valley Scientific and Natural Area and Minnesota River Valley. All interior spaces connect to the prairie surroundings through large windows that offer views in each of the four cardinal directions. The building includes editing suites, TV broadcast studios, green rooms, office space, conference rooms available for public use, and an indoor service bay for Pioneer’s fleet of mobile broadcast studios.

10. SEI Corporate Headquarters

    Having completed the multi-phased development of SEI’s main headquarters campus over the past 20 years, MSR Design provided master planning and full design services for the company’s first building on the new north campus. The new building accommodates 785 staff and serves as a headquarters entry with a café, meeting spaces, and event gallery for campus staff and guests.