MSR Design is a Minneapolis architecture and interior design firm that Thomas Meyer, Jeffrey Scherer and Garth Rockcastle started in 1981, originally as Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle. It’s a certified women-owned business today, with studios in Minneapolis and Salt Lake City and a foothold in Palm Springs. Libraries, academic buildings and civic work make up much of its portfolio, and the firm puts heavy weight on sustainability: its own 510 Marquette studio was the first Minnesota project to earn Living Building Challenge Petal certification. In Lincoln, Neb., MSR and local partner BVH Architecture are designing the new Central Library, an 80,000-square-foot conversion of the former Education Square building with a $58.8 million total cost. Sampson Construction is construction manager. The firm counts about 270 design awards.
The library architects
Scan MSR Design’s project list and a pattern appears quickly. Missoula Public Library’s downtown flagship. Tulsa City-County Library’s Central Library. Louisville Free Public Library’s Northeast Regional Library. L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library in Eau Claire. Hennepin County Library’s Southdale Library with the Edina Art Center. Davidson College’s George Lawrence Abernethy Library. Public and academic libraries are where this Minneapolis firm has built its reputation, which is a harder building type than it looks: open plan, heavily used, politically scrutinised, and funded through campaigns that take years.
That last point explains one of the firm’s listed services. Capital campaign support sits alongside master planning, feasibility studies, needs assessments, programming and visioning, which is not a service most architecture practices name. So does community engagement, offered as a formal service area including SEED certification, stakeholder input and alignment, and community surveys and analysis. For a civic client, that is the difference between a design team that attends the public meeting and one that runs it.
The practice dates to 1981 and works from two offices, Minneapolis at 510 Marquette Avenue South and Salt Lake City on South Rio Grande Street.
Sustainability is handled as technical work rather than positioning. The services list includes sustainability audits and performance assessments, support for Living Building Challenge, LEED and WELL certification, materials selection for health and well-being, and daylight and energy modeling. The firm carries a director of sustainable practice on staff.
Beyond libraries, the portfolio runs to adaptive reuse and civic work: RIDC Mill 19 in Pittsburgh, the City of Minneapolis Public Service Building, the Capitol Region Watershed District office and park in Saint Paul, Haverford College’s Visual Culture, Arts and Media building, the Tashjian Bee and Pollinator Discovery Center at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, and the Housing Authority of Salt Lake City’s Northwest Pipeline Building redevelopment. Historic preservation, entitlement and tax credit assistance are listed explicitly, which is what adaptive reuse of that kind requires.
Interior design is run as full service, including space planning, furniture selection and specification, furniture design, and signage, wayfinding and environmental graphics. Sources: msrdesign.com homepage and Services page.
