Courtesy photos
Gail Sullivan and Marylee Mercy
Managing Principal and Project Manager, Studio G Architects
Industry experience: 37 and 18 years
As the school year resumes, Jamaica Plain-based Studio G Architects is applying its expertise in educational designs to the next generation of projects. In March, ground was broken on the new Franklin Cummings Tech campus in Roxbury’s Nubian Square, following Studio G’s collaboration with Studio ENEE on the technical school’s relocation from South End. This spring, Studio G was selected as architect for Littleton’s new Shaker Lane Elementary School, while construction continues on the new Studio G-designed Florence Roche Elementary School in Groton. The firm also has a busy multifamily practice. In March, the town of Wellfleet selected Studio G as master planner for Maurice’s Campground, a 21-acre property that has been designated for a range of future housing types to help ease Cape Cod’s seasonal worker housing crunch.
Q: How does the firm’s current project pipeline break down by property type, and does the specialty in civic projects provide a buffer from market cycles in commercial development?
Sullivan: We were founded in 1993 and since then, we’ve been driven by building our mission of building sustainable communities, and that really sets the stage for the kinds of projects we want to pursue: schools and early childhood centers, civic buildings and multifamily housing, behavioral health. It’s quite a range, but we find that really fits us well and drives our approach to sustainability. Public projects are definitely slower to get and harder because it’s a public selection by a designer selection panel. It’s a much slower process and we have great competitors in this state. I hate to admit it, but it’s true. On affordable housing, our projects tend not to follow the same wave as the luxury and market-rate multifamily housing.
Q: How do current school designs reflect the latest research about how the physical environment influences learning?
Mercy: We were feeling there was a bit of a disconnect between the school design that the architects were working on and what teachers actually ended up with. This was true for many projects and not specific to any firm. Teachers would move into the school and keep teaching the way they were in the old school, in poor conditions. We wanted to make sure there was a clear understanding and communication between the educators and us, the designers.
I became an accredited learning environment planner, and that was a really intensive series of courses over nine months. It was made up of about half educators and half designers, and a few other developers and facilities people. We talked about all different aspects of education and facilities and the science of learning. The open concepts of the 1970s didn’t work, but the ideas of collaboration with that were very good.
We came out of that with the language of communication with educators, and we are using that to improve the projects. One part is that learning can take place anywhere. We have this term “universal design for learning.” It’s about removing barriers to students who are trying to learn. UDL encourages independence among learners, sparking an interest in whatever subject and learning about it in a way that works for them.
Sullivan: That ties to the environment itself. We call it “learning everywhere.” We might widen the hallway and have project-based learning happening out there. Maybe two first-grade classrooms come together to do a project. Maybe there’s science and technology in that shared hallway that is more significant than we could fit in a single classroom. Libraries were one of my favorite places as a kid, but libraries now are multimedia centers. There might be a makerspace.
Q: What are the opportunities for housing production in Wellfleet following the town’s decision to purchase Maurice’s Campground in 2022?
Sullivan: It’s been a family-owned campground since 1947. The owner’s children decided they didn’t want to run the campground and approached the town of Wellfleet, which has been seeking land to put affordable and workforce housing onsite. It’s 21 acres and we’re working right now on a community engagement process. What kind of housing? Seniors, seasonal workers, families with children: all need housing. And what else? Community spaces, support for oyster fisherman and the tradespeople: it’s a really interesting project where we’re going to create a whole new neighborhood. I love tiny houses, they are cute as heck, but they are not an effective way to use a big site. On a large site, if you’re going to move the needle, we really need to have some scale here. We’re looking at some interesting types.
Q: How are school designs reflecting new security protocols in the post-Sandy Hook era?
Mercy: When people are about security, the public idea is thinking about hardened entrances or security cameras everywhere. Really, the most effective strategy is prevention. We call it crime prevention through environmental design which creates an environment that is inhospitable to unwanted activities. You create wide open spaces with lots of eyes on the locations. We use boulders or trees or mounds to prevent cars from going into places they don’t belong, rather than a huge line of bollards which may be not attractive. These security things appear invisible, but they go a long way toward preventing a situation from happening. Beyond that, we have been doing the usual hardened entrances, security vestibules with multiple steps to gain access, [requiring] authority for a human being to check somebody’s credentials before they allow somebody in. This is particularly important for early childhood, where you might have custody issues. It is integrated into everything we do on the project.
Sullivan’s Five Favorite Places:
- Dubrovnik, Croatia
- Paris, France
- Teotihuacan, ancient site in Mexico
- Connemara, Ireland
- Thingvellir, Iceland where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet
Mercy’s Recommendations for Five Handy Websites:
- Whichbook.net to find your next read
- Printfriendly.com to make webpages printer-friendly
- Web.archive.org to see older versions of websites
- Coolors.co/image-picker to create a color palette from a photo
- Thenounproject.com to find icons for just about anything
