This small, unassuming family residence occupies a steeply sloped site in Madison’s Spring Harbor neighborhood, a post-war suburb within the city limits and in close proximity to downtown and the University of Wisconsin campus. The lot had sat idle for decades, considered too difficult to develop because of its narrow triangular shape, limited buildable footprint,...
How do educators and design professionals help young students learn the value of community and sustainability? One approach is to design their school building to demonstrate these values. The new Forest Edge Elementary School is a hub of innovation and 21st-century learning practices for young students in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, and a regional and national pacesetter...
“Kornberg Center continues our momentum in serving advances in science. Our scientists have the critical tools right at their bench to give them more flexibility in their exploration. The building itself inspires creative thinking to help us imagine the unimagined. And the sustainable construction provides a place for future generations to continue our momentum of...
Located at the outskirts of Cedarburg, a rural town 30 miles north of Milwaukee, this small orthodontics clinic that revisits the exhausted typology of conventional medical offices and their introvert, fluorescent-lit ambience. The client, a young orthodontist, decided to relocate her rapidly growing practice to a new state-of-the-art facility on an empty lot at the...
The Curtain House is a private residence on a long-vacant, narrow parcel embedded in Milwaukee’s Lower East Side, a dense, demographically diverse neighborhood known for affordable housing options and its lively mix of young families, blue-collar workers, students, and artists. The client, a lifelong urban dweller looking for a buildable lot in the central city...
A leader in window treatment design and manufacturing for 80 years, this window treatment manufacturer’s 1964-facility was outdated, undersized, and, ironically, lacked windows. An extensive renovation of both the interior and exterior of the corporate office included a conversion of 8,600 square feet of shop floor into a mix of open and private offices, new welcoming focal-point lobby, and a...
The University of Wisconsin campus is uniquely integrated into the urban fabric of Madison’s isthmus. Here, the geography forces a patchwork of busy streets, pedestrian thoroughfares, and mixed-use high-rise buildings—providing a unique density of people. The campus itself has a storied tradition of buildings that reflect their time and place. These buildings serve as a...
The building at 347 Ward Street in Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood was the type of structure that is nearly invisible to the undiscerning passerby. Windowless, and last renovated in 1973, the building disappeared into the context of the more vibrant neighborhood surrounding it. The multi-generational family book bindery inside had slowed production and was closing...
Block 27 is a small, four-unit rental apartment building in the Newton Booth district on Sacramento’s east side. The compact structure sits on an empty infill lot at the boundary between an area of distribution centers, warehouses, and light-industrial buildings on one side, and a dense residential neighborhood with treelined streets on the other. In response...
This vibrant, multipurpose new 40,000 square foot public library serves as a space for the community to gather, collaborate, and celebrate through a design that embraces openness. The lobby establishes a dramatic entry and unites the two intersecting rectangular volumes representing the library and a community hall. Sited on an abandoned brownfield site, paralleling a...
