Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Client: Milwaukee Montessori School
Lead Designers: Robert Mangurian, Mary-Ann Ray

60,000 Square Feet

A K-9 Montessori School

"With an initial budget of $15 per square foot (later expanded to $25), necessity demanded invention. Instead of capitulating to vinyl floors and fluorescent fixtures in the main spaces, Studio Works created a new palette for the floors in the classrooms, using a collage of particleboard and wheatboard, mdf, and osb in a patchwork pattern. For lighting, the architects inverted industrial strength metal halide lamps, outfitted them with sanded acrylic collars and stabilized with guy wires. They .. look saturnine and futuristic. The environment is built up from humble but intriguing basics. Perhaps the most signifigant design achievement is that Studio Works reached into the Montessori curriculum to reiterate its lessons at an architectural and environmental scale, suggesting that architecture is the largest instructional tool."

Joseph Giovannini, Architecture Magazine, June 2000

Received a Progressive Architecture Design Award