For Immediate Release: March 20, 2007
HGA Designs New Headquarters for Minnesota Public Radio That Enables the Broadcasting Icon to Work Better and Smarter in the Creation of its Award-Winning Content
Saint Paul, MN - The new headquarters building for Minnesota Public Radio in downtown St. Paul seamlessly integrates a fresh addition with the recently remodeled existing building, resulting in a new 120,000-square-foot facility that programmatically supports and architecturally defines the iconic public-radio institution. The glass, zinc and brick facility, designed by HGA Architects and Engineers, Minneapolis, co-locates 375 staff (previously housed in three buildings throughout downtown) in a state-of-the-art office, studio and interactive environment designed to promote better, smarter and higher levels of production in the creation of MPR's award-winning content.
"Early on in the design process, MPR's Board of Directors told us that the new headquarters building should represent a symbolic manifestation of 'the factory floor of creativity' that is MPR. Their key word was interaction," says Bill Blanski, project designer, HGA. "That means we needed to design a great place of communication that facilitates all sorts of planned and spontaneous interaction, whether that interaction is between editor and on-air personality, administrative assistant and finance, the board and the MPR staff, or the MPR staff and the Minnesota community at large. In addition, all of that interaction had to be in support of and in service to the generation of content that goes on the air and on the Internet."
MPR has more than 88,000 members with a network of 37 stations serving Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. In addition, MPR's national distribution division, American Public Media, produces more national programming than any other station-based, public-radio network. American Public Media's nationally syndicated programming includes A Prairie Home Companion®, Marketplace%E2%84%A2, Marketplace Money%E2%84%A2, Saint Paul Sunday%E2%84%A2, Pipedreams® and The Splendid Table%E2%84%A2. MPR also has an extensive menu of online services, which includes documentary programs, the Public Radio Music Source, archived news, chat rooms, blogs, podcasts, live radio streaming and a news page updated throughout the day with local, national and international headlines and reporting.
MPR's Board of Directors first identified the need for additional space in its 1995 long-range plan. The need was driven by technological innovations that would allow MPR to serve more listeners by delivering more news, more quickly. By that time, MPR's existing facility was already bursting at the seams, hence the location of more than a third of the workforce in other office buildings. With the funds secured through a capital campaign to renovate and expand that building, MPR turned to HGA.
"We were located in three buildings in downtown St. Paul and wanted to bring our staff together to improve creativity and communication," says Bill Kling, president, MPR, of the decision to make a new facility a reality. HGA was selected because the firm "had a strong team of both designers and engineers," Kling adds, "and we felt they could handle the project well."
HGA employed its "multi-disciplinary professional services to full force to provide an integrated design solution for MPR," Blanski says. The result is a stunning glass, zinc and brick addition that "dialogues" with the existing brick building on the exterior. The five-level interior includes meeting, work and production spaces strategically gathered around a daylight-filled atrium with a steel-and-glass curtain wall, and maple and zinc detailing. The atrium also houses an open staircase, located at the juncture of the new and existing buildings, which connects the building's five floors and basement while encouraging spontaneous engagement between staff and the public.
Exterior: Engaging the Public. In the design of the building's exterior, HGA manifested MPR's distinctive focus on community engagement, connection and dialogue.
"MPR is intentionally about dialogue on so many levels; between staff, of course, but especially between MPR staff and the communities MPR serves," Blanski says. "The format of public radio is about providing a sustaining presence in our community for knowledge and information, and for seeking out deeper understandings - so MPR is about engaging community."
Because the MPR headquarters sits next to the sidewalk along Cedar Street in downtown St. Paul, HGA reinforced the ideas about "dialogue" through an exterior design that allows the north addition to "talk" with the existing south building through form, materials and detailing. The existing building's low brick profile, square brick columns, large arched windows and granite base that steps up the slope of Cedar Street continues on in the addition, but with distinctive differences.
After a six-story office structure sandwiched between MPR's existing building and the church next door was removed, HGA designed an inviting addition of a plate-steel-and-glass curtain wall, supported in part by circular granite columns. The addition's granite base continues stepping up Cedar Street where the old building leaves off, but widens enough to provide a ledge for sitting for either passersby or staff taking an outdoor break. Meanwhile, brick and zinc details on the glass curtain wall "dialogue" with the materials on the existing building.
Up five stories, zinc detailing on the addition's exterior curtain wall expresses the location of the UBS Forum on the interior, which shares its interior window wall with the building's exterior glass. The communal signaling of the UBS Forum's location in the MPR building is significant, as the UBS Forum is MPR's new public space for dialogue about critical issues, debate on public policy and the communication of ideas facilitated by MPR among citizens and their civic and cultural leaders. The UBS Forum is also MPR's method of transforming its community-service model from that of a traditional producer-consumer to an innovative network-based model of interaction. It is reached via the building's glass-clad entry, which invisibly pins the old and new buildings together. The spacious entry, clad in maple-wood paneling, opens directly into the five-story, daylight-infused atrium with its open staircase.
"Another watchword MPR gave us was transparency," Blanski explains, referring to HGA's extensive use of glass throughout the addition and atrium to bring the outside and inside, the public and MPR staff together.
Fondly named "the town square" by MPR staff, the atrium staircase promotes mingling and conversation as members of the public and staff make their way up and down the stairs. On the third-floor "bridge" overlooking downtown St. Paul, the wood rails widen enough to hold a laptop computer; on the lower floors, the rail is eight-inches wide, enough to accommodate a beverage or a reporter's notebook.
HGA also placed MPR's glass-walled studios and coffee/copy rooms directly on the atrium, to provide people on the staircase with public views into the inner workings of MPR. "The atrium is all about creating opportunities for people to meet, interact and communicate on an informal basis," Blanski says.
HGA continued that idea throughout the rest of the building, by creating alcoves in which people can step off the main circulation paths and talk, huddle rooms with doors and telephones for one or two people to talk in private, and small well-lit rooms with comfortable chairs for spontaneous meetings. "These are just some of the ways in which our design is helping MPR work better and smarter," Blanski says.
Interior: Maximum Interaction and Innovation. The first-floor entry, the atrium and staircase, and the fifth-floor promenade leading to the UBS Forum are the most overtly public areas in the MPR building, with the UBS Forum often being the public's primary destination.
MPR's mandate for the UBS Forum, Blanski says, was to create an amphitheater for public discourse, largely in support of MPR's Public Insight Journalism initiative. Through the Public Insight Network of over 22,000 participants, the audience-rather than sitting quietly as the recipient of one-way communication-actively participates in the creation of content. Thus, the design, technology and acoustics of the UBS Forum were critical to the success of the innovative public-affairs program.
MPR also wanted the space to serve as an interactive production and broadcast facility for keynote speeches, moderated political debates, spirited town-hall meetings, assemblies of international religious leaders and discussions on hot-button cultural topics. In addition, the UBS Forum would function as an in-house meeting room for the Board of Directors, a classroom for staff-oriented education and professional-development seminars, and an on-air recording studio for live music.
In response, HGA designed a "multi-purpose room," Blanksi says. The rich maple-paneled walls cladding the circular room hide a custom-fabricated, motorized, amphitheater-style seating system that folds out from the wall. The seating accommodates groups from 20 to 200. The hinged and pivoted walls are finished on both sides, "so whether they're open or closed, they're beautiful," Blanski says. A 20-piece, circular table for the Board of Directors can be quickly set up or disassembled, and rolls away into a nearby storage closet.
Glass doors in the north-facing, floor-to-ceiling glass wall lead from the UBS Forum to a terrace, with views of architect Cass Gilbert's Minnesota Capitol dome. Views also include the church next door, previously hidden by the former office building. HGA managed and MPR paid for restoration of the church wall, the refurbishing of the wood columns supporting the stained-glass windows, and the removal and transportation of the church's rose window to Fargo where it was completely restored before being re-installed. The project earned HGA an award from the St. Paul Historic Preservation Society.
On the terrace, ledges are wide enough to hold a drink or plate of hors d'oeuvres-prepared in the catering kitchen adjacent to the UBS Forum-during social gatherings. A sound booth, control room, green room and open office space are also located on the fifth floor.
MPR's Open-Office Environment. "Another way in which the building helps MPR work better and smarter is in the organization of the work teams, and how they're distributed within the facility," Blanski says. "HGA has decades of expertise in organizing offices for maximum innovation, creativity and interaction. We studied the MPR workforce plan, and met with MPR staff during more than 30 meetings, to learn the culture of the company. Our solution, in terms of how we organized the workforce within the facility, is where the success lies in how it's working."
According to Kling, MPR's "greatest satisfaction is that our employees are interacting in the way that the architects had hoped the design would facilitate. The communication is significantly better now and it is good for employee morale to be together in one unified space." The fourth floor open-office space houses MPR's arts and culture programming departments. At the north end is the music library, with a listening room that looks into the restored stained-glass window of the church next door. The third floor houses the news department and national programs.
On both the fourth and third levels, team leaders have offices along the perimeter of the building, but their exterior and interior glass walls allow borrowed light to flow through the open-office space where wall heights are no more than 40 inches. The wall heights also "promote a culture that's about the exchange of ideas," Blanski says, "as people can easily stand up and look around to access what's going on."
The building's 14 studios, located on the third and fourth levels, float off the floor to isolate them from footfalls. Some are located on the atrium, their glass walls allowing passersby on the staircase to peer in during live broadcasts. In fact, one of the studios features desks on hydraulics, so broadcasters can sit or stand at a comfortable height. A combination of hard and soft walls allows the studios to be "tuned" to the sound and tenor of a voice.
The facility's 10 identical edit suites, for interactive programming production, are also located on the third and fourth floors. The edit suites are identical, Blanski explains, "to allow for flexibility and immediate access. Let's say all the edit suites on the news floor are being used; an editor from news can come up to the cultural programming floor and do their work in an identical studio. This sharing of edit suites also promotes interaction among the staff."
One of the hurdles MPR presented to HGA during the project was to design state-of-the-art space for broadcasting and content production within MPR's financial constraints. "A primary challenge was matching the needs of a complex, technologically driven company with the budget available to us," Kling says. "HGA was able to help us develop a design that met our needs for studios and editing and production suites, while still maintaining our budget."
On floors three and four, two- to three-person huddle alcoves, small rooms with a chair, telephone and door for privacy, listening rooms, and library-like spaces with seating provide MPR staff with a variety of conferencing opportunities. Administration and technical support are on the atrium level and second floor. On the garden level, MPR has set up a listening station and archive with which the public can access any program on file.
Acoustic design of the studios, work environments and gathering spaces are all "tuned" to feel interactive and alive, but not overly disruptive to the daily processes of MPR. The building's cast-in-place, dropped-beam concrete structure was designed to eliminate vibration and, where necessary, create long spans in the open-office spaces. Low-velocity air-handling systems throughout the facility control background noise and maintain comfort.
"Overall, we're very pleased with the creativity of HGA's design, the functionality of the space, and the way in which it facilitates communication and interaction of our staff," Kling concludes.
:: Minnesota Public Radio
HGA Contact: Julie Luers (612) 758-4000 e-mail JLuers@hga.com
Media Contact: Susan Evans, Evans Larson (612) 338-6999 e-mail susan@evanslarson.com