mca/curie high school space

location: Chicago, IL

date: 2017

type: design/build

role: designer, fabricator

From MCA:

"School Partnership for Art and Civic Engagement, also known as SPACE, is a pilot program created to foster the creative, intellectual, and civic development of students.

This multiyear creative residency places an artist, and their studio, in a Chicago public high school to transform the school space(s) into a site for artistic and civic exchange.

The artist and a core team of art and civics teachers design a new contemporary art-based, civic engagement curriculum taught in both courses.

Through this new curriculum, students use contemporary art strategies to take action in response to local issues, engaging the larger student body and community members in the process."

I was engaged by the MCA to develop and implement an approach for transforming a former teacher's lounge into a space more conducive for a long-term artist in residence studio and alternative classroom. With a limited budget, this involved designing custom seating that could double as storage and easily be rearranged, multiple vertical display and projection surfaces, work tables and desks, and a large scale curtain with applied branding.