John Allee ’86 Visits the Mill with Architecture Students

Sarah MacWright’s architecture class is one of the exciting new interdisciplinary electives debuted this school year, and it’s off to a great start. The class has already toured the construction site of the coming dormitory on west campus and visited Hudson, New York, to identify and sketch architecture in the field. On Thursday, they journeyed across the street to the Trevor-Lovejoy Zoo, where they met with the architects who led the redesign of the zoo store, the Mill—alumnus John Allee ’86 and Lisa Pedersen.

Once a functioning mill and then the campus Arts Center, the Mill was completely renovated in 2017 to accommodate an increasing number of zoo visitors. Allee and Pedersen walked the class through the redesign, explaining how they incorporated much of the original structure to maintain the history of the space while creating a more welcoming atmosphere.

With sketchbooks in hand, students walked through the building, taking note of intentional design details like exposed electrical components and how various elements of the structure are fastened together. Allee and Pedersen even brought the original architectural drawings from the Mill renovation with them, which were especially intriguing to the students, who are working on their own CAD (computer-aided design) drawings this semester. The class gathered around to look through the drawings, learning about how architects use different types of lines to represent their designs on paper.

The session ended in the multipurpose space above the school store. There, students asked thoughtful questions and shared their takeaways, relating the concepts they learned to spaces from their own lives. It was a short visit, but one packed with expert insight that just might inspire the next great Mustang architect!

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