Archives

1. Carleton College Weitz Center for Creativity

   The Weitz Center serves as a working laboratory for creativity—not only in the arts, but across the entire curriculum. It positions the college as a national leader in arts programs by creating an environment that fosters creativity, critical thinking, collaborative working skills, and cross-cultural exploration. An adaptive reuse and expansion of a former middle school complex, the center houses the departments of studio arts, dance and theater, and cinema and media studies. It incorporates classrooms, studios, a teaching museum, performance spaces, and state-of-the-art collaborative spaces.

    

    

    

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. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Wooddale Church Youth Center

   This renovation turns closed space inside-out and provides access to daylight for all classrooms and gathering spaces. New wayfinding and circulation paths create community connections, while providing secure spaces for pre-K and elementary school youth. Energizing color, playful graphics, and complementary materials establish variety and help navigate visitors to various areas and activities. The church knitting club also enjoys meeting on the spinner seats in the new space, demonstrating that all ages can find inspiration in environments that stimulate creativity and learning.

8. McAllen Main Library

   With an area equivalent to nearly 2 1/2 football fields, the building is the largest single-story library in the U.S. The designers had the old store interior and new mechanical systems painted white to form a neutral shell for patron and service areas, which are designated with color. Primary program areas—including community meeting rooms, the children’s library, adult services, and the staff area—are located in quadrants of the building. This clear organization allows easy wayfinding and customer access from a central service spine, delineated by a patterned wood ceiling that runs the length of the building.

   MSR Design led the design of the building interior and furniture selection as part of a team led by McAllen-based firm Boultinghouse Simpson Gates Architects.

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. Open Book

    A renovation of three conventional, historical buildings, the center responds fully to the client’s goals by embracing budget limitations, the buildings’ existing conditions, and the missions of the three organizations. The design incorporates literal detailing and judicious editing in the lyrical composition and intervention of old and new.