A small town in the heart of Minnesota’s bread basket had a beloved but run-down hotel that begged for new life. And a town elder had an idea for how to reinvigorate it. We worked together with the city on a design to transform it into a center of education.
Project Highlights
Type: Education, Adaptive Re-use
Size: 15,000 SF
Location: Sleepy Eye MN
Completion: Shelved
Project Collaborators Contractor: TBD
An old hotel becomes a new school.
The old Orchid Inn was once the only place for miles that was big enough to bring people together. Just about everyone had memories of some special event there: a wedding or a dance. But after years of disuse, the bar and kitchen had become decrepit and the hotel rooms so ragged they were beyond repair.
The new institute would use the hotel rooms as the linchpin of a language school that would house students for month-long immersion programs. The old bar, restaurant and dancehall would be repurposed as a convention center where students from the surrounding farmlands of SW Minnesota could come to learn more about agriculture.
A new double-height space was designed to stitch the two pieces together. Tall glass walls opened onto a community courtyard. Herringbone brick flooring referenced crop patterns. The metal roof trusses alluded to the lacy structures of center pivot sprinklers. Throughout architecture was used to make this old motor lodge a new place where young kids could connect to their community and each other.
