Indian
Community School
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
2006
The new Indian Community School of Milwaukee is located on a 200 acre wooded site approximately 10 miles from downtown Milwaukee in suburban Franklin Wisconsin. The facility will house a pre- K through 8th grade school and community center functions including classrooms, gym, large dining hall and community lobby, library, performance space, community meeting rooms, school administrative and corporate offices as well as outdoor gathering and sports facilities.
After Antoine Predock Architect was selected as Design Architect in an invited competition, a collaborative programming process was undertaken. Visits to the site and various tribal lands informed an understanding of the physical and mythical place the building would occupy. A matrix of spaces, comments, site and cultural influences were developed, and a series of graphic layers were explored and documented. These layers or laminates were continuously referenced as the project was developed into a tangible form.
The building form was carefully woven along a high ridge on the site in order to avoid removing ancient oak and shagbark hawthorn trees. Limestone blocks housing classrooms, a gymnasium and office spaces, anchor the building to the site and are in turn, captured by prairie grass berms that extend in from the site. A flying origomic copper roof provides shelter to the two story sections, while a green grid of prairie grass covers the lower masses of the building. Large glass enclosed gathering spaces seamlessly integrate interior and exterior spaces and the surrounding environment. In this way, there is a cross-pollination that arises for the connection of learning spaces with the natural environment, allowing elements and phenomena outside to become a didactic influence within.
In association with Executive Architect Eppstein Uhen Architects
