StudioMLA Architects was recognized with a Small Firm Design Award at the 2014 BSA Design Awards Gala for its Brookline Teen Center (BTC) project.
The BTC is an adaptive reuse success story and an example of meaningful design collaboration between the architects and the project's end users: the teenagers. Described by teens as "straight up awesome" and "better than being at home", the design aimed to capture the fleeting notion of what teens consider "cool". The design strategy can be summarized as striving to maintain the edgy "garage-ness" of the space, incorporating a blend of existing and new materials, while creating light, lofty, open spaces that leave ample room for post-construction teen expression. The Brookline Teen Center, soon to receive LEED certification, features a café that hosts frequent open mike nights, a gymnasium, fitness center, state of the art recording studio, and two lanes of candle pin bowling.
The project team included Kaplan Construction, project managers Barbara Stein and Kathleen Scanlon, RSE Engineering, and consulting architects GMI Inc.