January 2011 Archives

Over the past decade, this part of the city has been subject to close scrutiny from the planning and design communities in Minneapolis

Arising from this scrutiny have been many proposals intended to improve the area and bring it into the fabric of the city. The University has proposed and begun the construction of a new biomedical research campus. The Metropolitan Council has begun construction on the Central Corridor LRT. The City of Minneapolis has commissioned the SEMI Master Plan, which proposes wetland remediation and a Grand Rounds connection over the railyards that define the northern edge of the site. Numerous studies at the University have grappled with potential reuses of the grain elevators on the site.

What is missing from these proposals is an all-encompassing vision - something that ties together the disparate proposals for this site into a meaningful whole.

Ultimately, the individual proposals are only as good as they relate to one another and build upon mutual strengths. The aim of this project is to leverage the strengths of the existing proposals for this area into a cohesive vision for its future

The relationship between art students and professional artists is a dynamic one, always changing and dependent on the location it exists in. This expansion to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design explores the relationships between this dynamic world of art in the Twin Cities and how a student of MCAD could connect with it. Pods to be used as living units with attached studios connect to create a network of living/working units, as well as interstitial useable spaces in between. Circulation through skyways create an experience similar to an art walk, easing the transition from student to professional.

The program of an art school carries an inherent tension: it must provide both a safe and ordered place to support its students, but it must also expose them to varied environments and push them out of their comfort zones to catalyze creativity.

This proposal for the expansion of MCAD combines the diverse physical order created by the repetition of "L" shaped buildings with a new way of using architecture through existing social media and apps that interface with a flow of building occupancy information.

Conceived of as a merging of landscape and building in order to retain as much outdoor space as possible while allowing the Minneapolis College of Art and Design to quadruple their functional space. The program is arranged in the manner of streets and plazas with units pushing, pulling and puncturing the "Torn Prairie" above. Rammed earth bearing walls and massive beams carry the prairie, which pulls apart at the seams to allow light to penetrate work spaces. Display and critique functions are enclosed in channel glass "light boxes" that punch up through.