Case Study
415.402.0888 | MKThink.com
Town School for Boys San Francisco, CA
Align with 21st Century Education
Transform a 50-year school building into a dynamic teaching tool
MARK MILLER Principal, MKThink An accomplished creative, entrepreneurial professional who founded and led the award winning businesses MKThink and Project FROG. He has an impressive history serving multiple corporate leadership roles including Founder, Chairman and CEO positions.
CHALLENGE | Create
APPROACH | MKThink
a modernized learning
conducted a series of
environment from an outdated
discovery, analytic, and
facility located on a confined
creative workshops with
residential site without
the school leadership team.
disrupting school operations.
The workshops produced a
CONTEXT | Town School for Boys is a highly reputable, K-8 independent school with a longstanding tradition of educating San Francisco boys. The school’s educational vision is to integrate traditional instruction with interdisciplinary, inquirybased learning. To deliver on that vision, its existing facility needed substantial renovation and expansion while allowing for uninterrupted operations. The school’s location in an exclusive,
W. Brewster Ely IV Headmaster Town School for Boys “Learning is prized, love of school is essential and boyhood is celebrated” articulates our goal of fostering a love of learning which will serve students throughout their lives.
hillside, residential neighborhood presented major obstacles, and multiple studies over the prior 10 years had failed to produce a viable solution.
baseline understanding of the facility’s strengths and shortcomings as well as design concepts for environments to support the educational vision. These findings informed measurable, operational criteria for the ideal facility. From this framework, MKThink developed a fresh approach to the facility’s modernization. The project team aligned project scope and schedule and investment requirements with educational outcomes and established a case-for-action to convince school leaders to embrace comprehensive and nondisruptive renovation.
the IDEAS company for the built environment