Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Bee Discovery Center, MSR Design. Photo credit: Richard Brine
Materials Library Entry Criteria & Selection Guide Available For Other Design Firms.
MSR Design is an award-winning architecture and interior design firm committed to excellence. Recognizing the major role the building industry plays in improving the health of the environment and human health and well-being, the firm views every building project as an opportunity to make the world better through sustainable and healthy materials selection.
To move transparency practice forward, the design firm is offering its Materials Library Entry Criteria and materials selection guide free to other design firms. Simona Fischer, AIA, architect and associate with MSR Design, who is managing the initiative states, “We believe it’s time for the AEC community to step forward to ensure that every material choice in our industry is a good choice. Changing the marketplace is bigger than any one firm can manage. We’re asking project owners and other design firms to work with us to improve the building industry. As a first step, we’re making our guidelines and staff training around transparency, sustainability and health from our own materials library available.”
Interior of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Bee Discovery Center, MSR Design. Photo credit: Richard Brine
The downloadable packet includes MSR Design’s Materials Library Entry Criteria, Staff Onboarding Guide and Architectural Samples Donation Guide. MSR Design’s goal in sharing the packet is to provide a template to help others achieve measurable results that improve the lives of clients and building occupants, while building momentum in transforming the industry through a more cohesive, unified message. “Another firm may have a slightly different take as they develop entry criteria for their own materials library, but if our messages are similar and our goals are clear, we have an opportunity to accelerate our collective impact,” says Fischer.
Wendy Vittori, executive director for HPDC, says, “We’re excited to work with MSR Design to make the criteria and guide more broadly available to the A+D community. As a member organization, HPDC encourages and facilitates collaboration among our members to more rapidly advance the practice of materials health. We applaud MSR Design for their generosity in sharing this resource with the broader community, and we look forward to working with them through the use of this tool to accelerate progress towards healthier materials.”
ABOUT MSR Design
MSR Design is an award-winning architecture and interior design firm committed to excellence. Since 1981, the firm has produced work of enduring value: buildings that are expressly right for their time and place and that culturally and physically age gracefully. Their projects are diverse in type, size, and location, with specific depth of experience serving library, office, cultural, higher education, and residential clients. The firm has earned a national reputation for both designing exceptional new spaces and, through adaptive reuse, renovation, and preservation, designing innovative ways to reuse buildings.