Early Childhood Education Centers: Design leaders in sustainable building and landscaping for early care and education and indoor and outdoor play. Collaborated successfully with independent schools, corporations, foundations, and individual clients. Additionally, nationally and internationally designing children’s environments, K-12 schools, youth centers, multi-generational spaces, museums, parks, offices, libraries, and residential projects.

Landscape Design + Play: Creating outdoor environments that are beautiful, sustainable, educational, and fun. Designs that encourage active play and reconnect children to nature. Services include participatory community planning, park and playscape design, natural playscape design, full landscape documentation and planting design, certified playground safety inspections, accessibility and inter-generational play, and custom equipment design.

 

Ashley McGraw Architects has acquired studioMLA Architects, a 15-person architecture and landscape design firm headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts. Founded in 2006, studioMLA Architects is recognized as a national leader in the design of early education facilities along with nature-inspired playscapes for young children.

“As we emerged from the challenges of COVID, a vital component of our strategic plan was to build a more resilient business by diversifying our markets,” explained Matthew Broderick, President & CEO of Ashley McGraw Architects. “We aimed to build one of the best community-focused design practice in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, expanding our capacity to make an impact and creating more opportunities for staff. This strategic acquisition provides Ashley McGraw a Boston-based office and a national practice centered on early childhood education, expanding our demographic diversity to include a much younger age group and anchoring our geographic diversity in New England.”

As part of the acquisition, studioMLA Architects will become the Early Childhood Education Studio within Ashley McGraw Architects and studioMLA founder, Mike Lindstrom, will become the seventh partner of the firm. As the founding Principal of studioMLA Architects, Lindstrom has over 30 years of experience and is a leader in the design of play and learning environments for children. He has been a member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and regularly presents at the group’s annual conferences nationwide. Lindstrom has served as an advisor to the American Academy of Pediatrics on Child Care Center Design, taught at the Institute on Childcare Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for seven years, and has been instrumental in organizing the World Forum “onDesign” conferences at UC Berkeley and in Rotorua, New Zealand. He is also on the board of several nonprofit organizations and writes, speaks, and leads workshops on sustainability and the design of children’s educational environments.

Read the full press release…

 

Partial Client List

  • American Eagle Outfitters

  • Bayer Pharmaceuticals

  • Blue Cross and Blue Shield

  • Boston College

  • Boston Nature Center

  • Boston Community Pediatrics

  • Boston University

  • Brandeis University

  • Bright Horizons

  • Bristol-Myers Squibb

  • Brookline Center for Community Mental Health

  • Brookline Teen Center

  • Chick-fil-A’s Jeannette Cathy Children’s Center

  • Children’s Investment Fund

  • Cisco Systems

  • Cornell University

  • Duke University

  • EMC Corporation

  • Epiphany School

  • ESPN

  • Fayerweather Street School

  • Harvard University

  • Horizons for Homeless Children

  • Genentech Inc.

  • Goldman Sachs

  • HSBC

  • Huntington Bank

  • Nurtury Learning Lab

  • IBM

  • IFF

  • JM Family Enterprises

  • JFK Medical Center

  • Keene State University

  • LISC

  • Merrill Lynch

  • Mt. Holyoke College

  • National City Bank

  • Pfizer

  • PNC Bank

  • Procter & Gamble

  • Room to Grow, Boston

  • SAS Institute

  • Stone House

  • SUNY Cortland

  • SUNY Rockland

  • Timberland

  • Time Warner

  • The Lincoln School

  • The Pennsylvania State University

  • The Trustees

  • Town of Rockland, MA

  • Town of Sandwich, MA

  • Town of Newburyport, MA

  • JICA Yokohama Center

  • UAW and Ford Motor Company

  • United Way of Miami-Dade

  • Yale University

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION SELECT PROJECT EXPERIENCE

Landscape Design + Play