<p>As with many urban areas, public schools in Chicago currently operate significantly above the desired capacity for the most effective learning, resulting in overcrowded classrooms and large schools where many students have little individual attention. Due to extensive research indicating better performance in smaller classroom environments, large cities began experimenting with strategies to scale down the organization of schools to achieve optimum sizes for student achievement. Because it is politically and financially impractical to build new public schools as small as desired, a new typology of schools within schools has emerged.  This project is a new prototype based on an organization that takes an 800-student elementary school and provides 4 smaller schools within one building.  The schools share certain resources and facilities but have adequate autonomy to generate individual identities and cultures within their own precincts.  </p>

Chicago Public School

 This project was completed both as a prototype research project to test computerized fabrication techniques and to fulfill the immediate program needs of the client as the first phase of a longer-term master plan. The design consists of four walls defining the space of the slide library and lit by the skylight above. The east wall is made up of 435 sandwiched layers of 1&Prime; thick ultralight (lightweight mdf).  The north, south and west walls are patterned with 1/4&Prime; perforated lines outlining the actual tooling paths for each of the layers of the east wall &ndash; these lines are illuminated by the light of the skylight in the slide library. As part of the rigor to digitally draw, fabricate and manage the entire project, every component of the design was milled regardless of its complexity to enable the walls to be assembled like furniture. 

Columbia University The Department of Art History and Archaeology

Columbia University Slide Library

<p>Altschul Auditorium is a 400-seat auditorium/classroom design that served as a prototype for a capital program upgrading classrooms throughout the university to provide state of the art multimedia capabilities.</p>

Altschul Auditorium, Columbia University

Karen Fairbanks and Scott Marble, principals at Marble Fairbanks and professors at Columbia University, discuss their first renovation in a school at Columbia University. The building was originally a theater, and the architects used digital fabrication to control the acoustics and enable professors to move about the room freely while still being able to be heard. 

Our Children's Foundation is a non-profit after-school facility in Harlem.

Our Children's Foundation

The architects Karen Fairbanks and Scott Marble talk about the Our Children's Foundation, a non-profit organization which serves as an after school educational and recreational facility for the children of Harlem. The design by Marble Fairbanks consists of the complete renovation of and an addition to a three-story industrial building. The spaces are organized around a new atrium. 

This project is an alternative configuration for the public spaces of the Graduate School of Journalism and an addition to the building that sensitively responds to the McKim, Mead &amp; White context. 

Toni Stabile Student Center, Columbia U. Graduate School of Journalism

Karen Fairbanks and Scott Marble, architects at Marble Fairbanks and professors at Columbia University, discuss their renovations of the Graduate School of Journalism. The architects wanted to create a space that was better suited to the changing needs of today's journalism students and professors. 

 Marble Fairbanks is a design-driven, client-focused architecture firm with offices in New York and Atlanta led by partners, Scott Marble and Karen Fairbanks. Founded in 1992, the practice is at the forefront of merging user-centered design processes with advanced digital tools and technology to create high-quality spaces for clients.  

Marble Fairbanks Architects

 Scott Marble and Karen Fairbanks, from Marble Fairbanks, discuss their collaboration as part of the Client Team with Weiss Manfredi the architects the Nexus Building at Barnard College. 

Karen Fairbanks and Scott Marble, principals at Marble Fairbanks and professors at Columbia University, renovated Slide Library, transforming it from exclusively a library to a student center. 

Glen Oaks Branch Library is an 18,000sf LEED Gold certified building located at the juncture of a commercial area and a residential neighborhood. The building doubles the area of the previous building, providing reading rooms and collections on three floors, community rooms, and computers and digital technologies integrated throughout. A landscaped plaza and exterior reading garden provide seating for the community outside the building. To relate the building to the scale of the residential community and meet zoning requirements, half of the interior spaces are placed below grade. Natural light illuminates that lower level through a two-story atrium and strip skylights in the plaza above. Above grade massing and materials respond to the differing site conditions. The channel glass façade provides a luminous glow in the interiors and transforms the building into a beacon for the neighborhood. A large picture window allows for views into and out of the second floor children’s area while providing a civic identity to the community. On bright days, the word “search” appears on the north façade, moving across the surface as the sun moves across the sky. The graphic pattern on the glass curtain wall at the street level includes the word “search” translated into many of the languages spoken in Glen Oaks. 

Marble Fairbanks Architects

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PLAYLISTS CURATED by Marble Fairbanks Architects