From the green

When the Design & Fabrication Lab opened in 2019, it was one room, one laser cutter, and a rule: document the failure before you fix it. Seven years later the room is booked solid from Grade 6 electives through Senior Thesis builds, and this summer it finally gets to stretch — the adjoining workshop is being folded in, roughly doubling the floor.

The expansion adds eight work benches, a second laser cutter (retiring the sign-up spreadsheet of grief), a dedicated textiles corner, and a ventilated finishing booth that means painted projects no longer cure in the stairwell, to the relief of everyone who uses the stairwell.

What isn't changing: the wall. Every broken prototype with its handwritten tag — the snapped turbine blades, the un-waterproof boot, iteration one through five of the famous rain machine — moves to the new space intact. 'The wall is the curriculum,' says arts director Sarah Chen-Aldous, who fought for its square footage before the benches were counted.

The expanded lab opens with the school year in September. Visiting families can see it on any morning tour — and at the fall open houses, Grade 8 students will be running the demonstrations.

Marlowe's three fall open houses are set: Saturday, September 26; Saturday, October 17; and Saturday, November 7 — each starting at 10:00 a.m. and running about two hours. Booking ahead through the tour scheduler helps us plan coffee and name tags, but nobody is turned away at the gate.

A note on format, because ours is a little unusual: there is no auditorium presentation and no scripted route. Faculty are in their own classrooms, the labs and studios are running, and the tours are led by students — who are cheerfully unsupervised in what they choose to tell you. The head of school takes unscripted questions on the green at 11:30, weather permitting, and in Barton Hall when it doesn't.

Children are not just welcome but useful: the Lower School rooms are set for them to try things, and how a school feels to your child at nine years old is data no brochure can give you. Come with questions, leave with mud on your shoes — the ravine trail is open, and it's the best thing we'll show you all day.