WFX Awards » Solomon Awards » Best Special Project or Initiative

Nominee: Elevate Studio

Project: 3 Mile Project

URL: www.elevatestudio.net
          www.3mileproject.com

Size: 801-2000 seats

Date Completed: 21-Nov-10

Description:

3 Mile Project is a non-denominational ministry center for youth ages 5th grade through 12th grade,  a place where teens can come for recreation and social engagement in a safe, spiritual setting and where adult leaders can play alongside the youth and offer friendship, role-modeling and spiritual guidance.  Activities include indoor sports courts (which accommodate 1200 seats for concerts), video game arcade, contest arena with seating risers, table games area, skate park, reball arena, and 3 theater “pods”û all free with the $5 entrance fee—as well as a subsidized café and bookstore. 

The project is the brainchild of four businessmen with a history and passion for youth ministry.  After surveying 750 young people about their desires for the facility, the owners challenged the architects to create a place that would efficiently and securely accommodate the program activities and cause users to say, “WOW! You did this for me?” upon entering. 

The owners chose a 30-year-old former plastic injection molding plant as the venue.  The design team drew on the industrial nature of the building for aesthetic inspiration and detailed to the gifts and skill-levels of volunteers.  They also fabricated and installed key design features themselves, continuing an emerging trend in their architectural work nationwide.  Primary materials include framing lumber, OSB panels, corrugated sheet metal, polycarbonate panels, carpet squares, sports flooring and indoor/outdoor carpeting.  Key design features bear special attention:

Café tables were made from particle board rounds covered by youth-created collages on a variety of themes û sports, candy wrappers, movie tickets, cars, fly-fishing, and even facial hair! û followed by 4 coats of clear resin;

Quilted-vinyl shipping blankets were used as acoustical wall treatment in the theater pods and as upholstery for booth seating in the café;

Media monitor arrays were made from a spider’s web of raw lumber, aircraft cable and clear blue compressor hose;

Large pendant lamps shades over the concourse surround industrial fixtures and are made of spiraled layers of deer fencing, hardware cloth and insect screening;

Guardrails in the three café skyboxes, which overlook the sports courts, are made from repurposed bed slats from IKEA and wire shelving components;

Acoustical wall treatment in the café was made by shingling panels of heavy-duty grey industrial felt accented with brightly colored craft felt.

Digital “fire pits” surrounded by semi-circular seating tiers are made from livestock feed tanks with two layers of acrylic sheet sandwiching 2 inches of crushed tempered glass (from a glass supplier’s dumpster) illuminated from within by LED panels.

The store service counter is covered in 64,200 strips from brightly colored t-shirts knotted on chicken wire û the painstaking work of a senior women’s prayer circle.

3 Mile Project was privately funded and relied on donations of materials, equipment and labor amounting to more than half the construction value.  Renovation expenditures came in at less than $22/square foot û a small price to pay for a richly creative environment that has seen attendance rapidly grow to more than 1500 per weekend and a success by any measure.