Marygrove Teaching School | PLY+ Architecture

With roots in 1990 in Georgia, and participation across 46 states, this will be the first P-20 program implemented in the city of Detroit (phase 1 construction is currently underway). P-20 provides a single, educational experience from “cradle-to-career” with integrated and continuous mentorship across all grades. This approach allows for shared responsibility and accountability of individual students and their career paths from a young age and employs a collaborative, small group, project-based curriculum. The Immaculata building serves the children moving through grades K-5 within the Marygrove campus. For Immaculata, the historic review process identified the organization of the building’s double loaded corridor as historically significant with an explicit charge to preserve the character of the central corridor on all three floors of the building. This charge was in direct conflict with the desires of the teachers participating in the design process who identified transparency into classrooms and between common spaces as important to the P-20 curricular vision. In response, our design approach identified small opportunities within the existing corridor to infill unnecessary existing openings (trophy cases, unnecessary doors, etcetera) with glass to provide improved transparency.

Classroom layouts are redesigned to align with the number of children to be enrolled in each grade level and this afforded an opportunity to redesign shared classroom walls to integrate millwork, sinks, and transparency between classrooms. These design elements are identical per floor to reduce construction cost and do not interfere with existing windows and door openings. Color and form are employed to engage the children’s sense of curiosity and encourage experimentation and sharing is emphasized through permeable reading pods, flexible seats, and dynamic ceilings. Immaculata also hosts collaborative spaces including a media center, reading room, gymnasium, restorative justice center, and maker spaces. As a design/research exercise, the project interrogates how dynamic, playful and sensorial spaces serve to advance new methodologies for teaching and learning while reinforcing Marygrove’s values of community involvement, action on behalf of justice, professional development, and interdisciplinary learning.

Buildings have the capacity to serve a pivotal role in engaging and transforming communities. The School at Marygrove has been important to Detroit’s Northwest neighborhood since its founding, serving as a community cornerstone with a long history of empowering women, as an institution started by women, for women in 1922. The story of urban growth and decline in the adjacent Fitzgerald neighborhood is a stark reminder that these early ambitions for equal access to education and social justice were effectively undermined by a range of competing urban disinvestments including urban renewal, public housing policies, and redlining. In 2017, as an effort to reinvest in the vibrancy of the neighborhood in the face of the challenges that urban vacancy presents, the City of Detroit launched The Fitzgerald Revitalization Project and by 2019, Marygrove College closed its doors to make way for an ambitious cradle-to-career educational effort by joining forces with The Kresge Foundation, The University of Michigan School of Education, Detroit Public Schools Community District, and Starfish Family Services. The School at Marygrove as a new educational model is envisioned to mend the gaps of access to education and professional opportunities for the surrounding community with the new P-20 program leading the way.

Lead Architects: Craig Borum, FAIA, Jen Maigret, AIA

Collaborators: IDS (Architect of Record), MPR Arquitectos

MEP Engineering: IDS

Structural Engineering: IMEG

Civil Engineering: Giffels Webster

Photography: Jason Keen

Website: https://www.jasonkeen.com/about