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Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/100642
& Architecture design perhaps, motivating kids in the classroom, too. It was an important project to JCPS, and it fell to Mike Mulhern and John Lee, facility planners for the school district, to fgure out how to turn an abstract idea into concreteand-steel reality. Te structure would not only need space for basic education ��� classrooms, a library, ofces and such ��� but would have to accommodate instrumental music, dance, voice and theater. Mulhern and Lee determined that an assembly of old (the existing standard-issue yellow-brick school building) and new (the state-of-the-art addition) should match the urban landscape 72 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 1.13 Clockwise from top left: The dance studio as seen from the view off Main and Wenzel streets; the black box theater named in honor of arts patron Owsley Brown II; a storytelling space in the library; one of the color-speci��c arts classrooms. and be approachable from 360 degrees, with facings on Market, Wenzel and Main streets. Enter the Louisville architectural frm Bravura. Its team of Ed Kruger, Jim Walters and Jef Pickett decided to house the existing facility in glass, advertising the creativity and change that was going on within, and thus challenging the construction to be just as innovative on the outside. A professional black box theater, a library, new piano lab and arts classrooms grounded the design. An outdoor amphitheater pulls triple duty as a performance space and play area while masking the mechanics of the building. Meanwhile, designer Shelley Malicki of Bravura chose innovative colors for the interior, with a liberal use of aubergine (royal purple) and including rusty orange (representing drama), forest greens (dance) and blues (music). Te colors are used like a game of chutes-and-ladders to lead students from space to space. To convey a sense of energy and creative spirit ��� and to make the old building ft with the new ��� architects played with angles, merging the levels of the two structures with a series of curves and risers. Slanted glass hallways display vistas of downtown and corridors arch upwards, with the idea of inspiring students to reach for the heavens.