Archives

1. Missoula Public Library

   The new building houses four other community organizations (MCAT, Families First Learning Lab, SpectrUM Discovery Area, and the University of Montana Living Lab) to create a library, museum, and science and community center that blends Missoula’s rich heritage with world-class innovations all under one roof. The design process involved an intensive week-long visioning session with leadership from the library and partner organizations to establish project goals and guiding principles. The main floor offers a marketplace with a cafe, retail store, new library materials, and the audiovisual collection; a makerspace; MCAT’s high tech production studio, equipment check-out services, and sound booths; a teens’ area; and the University of Montana Living Lab. Focused on children, families, and play, the second floor houses the Hank and Nancy Harrington Children’s Library, Families First Learning Lab, SpectrUM Disovery Area, and a mix of collaborative learning spaces shared by the partner organizations. The third floor includes a demonstration kitchen, reference services, fiction and nonfiction collections, a business center, and genealogy center. The top floor provides spaces for public engagement and gathering and access to an exterior patio.

   MSR Design served as design architect and interior designer, and A&E Design was the architect of record.

    

    

2. Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Bee Discovery Center

   The health of pollinators is in danger from pesticide use, lack of forage, destruction of nest habitats, and colony collapse disorder. Serving as the outreach arm of the University of Minnesota’s Bee and Pollinator Research Lab, this new center gives next generations an opportunity to learn about the intricate and essential world of pollinators. Located on the Red Barn Farm site at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, the center features exhibit space for telling the story of honey bees, Monarch butterflies, and other pollinators, while inviting visitors of all ages to sense the world from the vantage point of the small pollinators. A learning lab provides space for interpretation and educational activities. The design connects interior program spaces to an outdoor environment that features demonstration pollinator gardens and bee hives.

3. Hennepin County Library Southdale Library & Edina Art Center

   This new regional library and art gallery will serve as an extension of an 8-acre urban green space, featuring a trailhead for regional trails, activated terrain, native plantings, and wetland gardens. A partnership between the Hennepin County Library and Edina Art Center, the new building will showcase how these community organizations are better together. The library and arts center is designed to meet the ambitious goals of Hennepin County’s Climate Action Plan and the State of Minnesota’s B3 sustainable guidelines. A combination of passive design, a high-performance façade, efficient building systems, and on-site renewables will enable the project to achieve near net-zero energy. The completed design will include a spectrum of restorative landscapes, from open water within the low areas of the site to wet prairies, a freshwater marsh, tallgrass prairies, and oak barrens. The library and arts center will also serve as a trailhead for the Nine Mile Creek regional trail system and provide a missing link in the Edina Promenade to connect local parks and regional assets.

4. Haverford College Visual Culture, Arts & Media (VCAM) Building

   Haverford College’s new Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) building repurposes a gym built in 1900 into a vibrant 21st-century learning environment. The design preserves the old gym’s central, two-story vaulted space, while inserting a three-story, object study/media production classroom and creating a new living room for the campus. All primary program spaces open onto and animate the heart of the building—a three-story remnant of an indoor running track—that now functions as campus family room with kitchen, community table, display area, projection wall, and movable furniture. Classrooms, labs, offices, and presentation spaces encourage trans-disciplinary collaboration and experimentation in digital media, film, 3D fabrication, and material culture. The project is certified LEED-NC v. 3 Gold.

5. Tulsa City-County Central Library

   The design team targeted three primary goals for the project: 1. Become a downtown destination that contributes to renewal of the urban core. 2. Create a library building that responds to 21st-century library needs. 3. Be generative, positively impacting library users, the surrounding community, the library industry, and the environment.

   To achieve these goals, the design team crafted a building program and architectural response that includes a revitalized, humanized civic plaza and new public garden for programming and community events; a clear, secure entry sequence in which all ways of entering the library collect into one main lobby area; a new parking garage; an interactive education center; a maker space; and a destination children’s library with direct access to the garden. Sustainable measures include improved thermal performance of the entire building envelope, daylight harvesting and lighting strategies, and the first rooftop photovoltaic solar array installed on a Tulsa building.

6. Mill City Museum

   Located within the ruined walls of the National Historic Landmark Washburn A Mill, the Mill City Museum focuses on the stories of flour milling, water power, railroading, food product development, grain trading, and farming, as well as the related people, labor, and immigrant stories. With multiple entries on two levels, the museum functions as a porous link between downtown Minneapolis and the river. A must-see addition to the riverfront’s menu of cultural attractions, the museum furthers the city’s vision of reconnecting to its birthplace at Saint Anthony Falls.

7. Madison Public Library Central Library

   The library has been completely transformed to adapt gracefully over time, provide a user-centric environment that addresses both customer and staff needs, and offer a community destination that enhances Madison’s cultural offerings. A huge success, the transformed library has become a popular and vibrant community amenity that has spurred urban redevelopment. Since its reopening in September 2013, the third floor spaces have been continuously booked for everything from art openings and concerts to fundraisers and weddings, and new businesses have opened on adjacent blocks, further increasing the vitality of a part of the city that was previously struggling.

   Potter Lawson served as associate architect, also providing cost estimating and electrical engineering for the project.

8. Minnesota Children’s Museum

   A reorganized interior improves entry sequencing, ticketing, and circulation by moving the main entry from street level to skyway level where 80% of visitors arrive from a parking structure. A new central stair and elevator provide visually clear access to exhibit galleries from the main lobby. New colorful portals offer clear wayfinding to exhibit galleries, which provide neutral and flexible shell space for changing exhibits. The redesigned interior and exterior simplify the visual complexity of the original architecture to provide an orderly backdrop to the energetic chaos created by hundreds of kids engaging with highly interactive exhibits. Annual attendance at the museum has increased by 28% since reopening.

9. Aeon the Rose Housing

   This new housing complex includes 47 affordable and 43 market rate apartments, underground parking, and various indoor and outdoor community spaces. Using the Living Building Challenge (LBC) as a framework in the process, the designers placed equal emphasis on providing equity and beauty, meeting SB2030 goals for reducing energy 70% below baseline, reducing water use by 50%, and not significantly increasing construction costs over a conventional building. The design incorporates many small measures that add up to significant gains in each of these areas.

10. 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.