WMEP Interdistrict Downtown School
Minneapolis
Cuningham Group Architecture

The design of this "green living school" teaches lessons on the environment

© Peter Kerze

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As a multicultural learning center, this award-winning K-12 school serves nine Minnesota school districts that constitute the West Metro Education Program (WMEP). Built atop a city-owned underground parking ramp in downtown Minneapolis and adjacent to a building for the University of St. Thomas’ school of education, the project embodies a cooperative effort to establish an integrated, interdistrict magnet school for 600 students. The school intends to utilize the diverse downtown environment and all its resources, making appropriate and full use of advanced technologies, supporting hands-on experiential learning, and enhancing multicultural learning, exchanges, and community-building.

Cuningham Group’s design of the new school and its space program reflects this goal by providing focused instructional "houses" with labs for hands-on work and shared whole-school space. Six of these centers for the elementary, middle and secondary levels also feature ancillary personal and activity spaces. Embracing a "learning while doing" philosophy, the school partners with neighboring business, government and arts communities, utilizing these partnerships and facilities as external labs.

Further characterized as a "green living school," the institution established an environmental focus early in the design process that evolved into clearly defined goals related to resource efficiency, daylighting, indoor air quality, materials, reuse/recycling, and building systems. The design of the school helps educate youth on how their actions and the built environment affect the natural environment through understanding the school’s air, water, energy, and material systems. Innovative in its design as an environmental teaching tool that provides tangible examples for learning, the school’s response to these goals ultimately creates a living curriculum from which students acquire knowledge and life-skill learning related to a sustainable future.

Formal name of Project:
WMEP Interdistrict Downtown School

Location:
Minneapolis

Gross square footage:
102,500 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$14.2 million

Owner:
West Metro Education Program (WMEP)

Architect:
Cuningham Group Architecture, P.A.
201 Main Street SE, Suite 325
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Tel: 612-379-3400
Fax: 612-379-4400
www.cuningham.com