The competition assignment for the 2008 Cavin Family Traveling Fellowship is to design a Land Campus that celebrates Maria Montessori’s vision of adolescents as children of the soil. The design solution for the Land Campus of a Minneapolis Montessori school should integrate Montessori’s hands-on educational philosophy with environmental awareness and organic food production. Middle school students from the Minneapolis school will be in residence at the Land Campus for several weeks at a time during the school year. However, the proposed design solution must provide opportunities for leasing the facility for conferences and retreats when school is not in session. A frugal and efficient design approach should make the campus economically viable.
The primary design parameter is the environmental context of the remote northern Wisconsin site of approximately 200 acres. A lake, a pond, woodlands, and open fields create beautiful vistas and eco-systems that must be respected. The mission is to design a facility that accommodates the safe, accessible and secure setting for education and at the same time creates a challenging world for testing the limits of learning. The design of the land outside of the property is beyond the scope of this competition.
The remote sylvan environment provides a setting where the harvesting, conservation and recycling of energy, water and materials is particularly important. The proposed designs should make these processes explicit and incorporate the programmatic and environmental elements into a unified solution.
View and downlaod the complete Competition Program including the detailed "Building Program":
PDF-file (click on this link).
The following is a link to the site map:
Site Map (click on this link)
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