Michael E. Capuano Early Childhood Center

Narratives

Architect Narrative

Overview
This PK-1 school is designed to accommodate 560 students in a two-story facility on the edge of an existing city park. It serves the youngest students from around the city and provides full-day programs aimed at reading and language readiness, as well as an extensive after-school program. Because of its location on a city park, the new center is designed to serve as a community resource with a full-size gymnasium, a cafetorium, and a computer center for both school and adult use.

What exemplary ideas do the designs contain that enhance learning?
The extraordinary focus on child-centered design created a welcoming facility for 3-6-year-olds and an environment that better suited teaching and classroom needs of this population. A more square-shaped classroom was created to allow easy teacher movement and control among curriculum stations. Recognizing the importance of adequate storage, classroom designs included cabinets and drawers of all shapes and sizes, including specifically designed space to hang three-foot tall flip charts used regularly by teachers. In order to avert the disruption of regularly ferrying small children to distant bathrooms, the school design includes a children’s bathroom in every classroom.

Because of their age most students in their first year or two at the school cannot read typical way-finding signage intended for adults. To address this need, a three-foot-high alphabet letter is formed in the wall tile outside each of the 24 classrooms, teaching students to recognize their classrooms by the letters “A” through “X.” The design also addressed the scale of the building, organizing it on a single linear “street” without any confusing corridor crossings. Many items were downsized for student use, with student counters only 13 1/2” high, students toilets only 11” high, and classroom doors with windows at both adult level and child level.

In order to create an enhanced environment for learning through a variety of green, high performance measures, the project used several methods to introduce daylight into classrooms, including translucent skylights and light shelves that bounce sunlight onto the ceiling and then deeper into the classroom. These enhancements provide classrooms with low-glare, even daylighting which has been shown to enhance student learning.

A significant lesson learned since completion of the project, however, is that several users were inadvertently defeating daylighting by leaving blinds closed all day. As these teachers have come to value qualities of the daylighting design, they have learned to manipulate blinds to achieve desired low-light levels at nap time and then re-adjust the blinds to return the room back to optimum daylighting performance. Another lesson learned is that in order for this to occur most easily and regularly, all blind controls should be securely attached to the wall, easy to operate, and the blind needs to be visible from the point of operation.

What innovations in the planning, programming and design process supported the realization of those exemplary ideas?

An inclusive process, led by the city’s new project manager, encouraged teacher input throughout the design and led to the incorporation of the various classroom design considerations described earlier. By educating the city’s project manager and creating a high performance champion on the owner’s side, the team was able to enhance the project with investment in energy and water efficiency measures that would save money for the owner over time. Additionally, the team sought creative financing through grant funding that allowed the incorporation of learning enhancements such as daylighting.

Educator Narrative

As Principal of the new Early Childhood Center, I would like to comment on the goals of the environment as it applies to learning from an educator’s point of view. This was a highly successful collaboration of educator input, project management direction and architect design. Our staff had input on every aspect of the physical environment. Items such as color scheme (muted “southwestern colors” that have a calming affect on young children), linear design (keeping twists and turns to a minimum), double porthole windows in the classroom doors (one at adult height and one at child height), and toilet facilities in all classrooms with double-height sinks outside the bathroom so that hygiene could be monitored. Other items of import include indirect, sensor-controlled lighting along with natural lighting through large classroom windows, multiple skylights in upstairs corridors and in upstairs classrooms. Classroom storage for all shapes and sizes of materials, state-of-the-art teacher computers that project onto TV screens along with DVD and Video capability were installed. Multiple computers in every classroom along with 12 computers in the library and 20 in the computer lab give maximum flexibility for teacher use. Also included were well-equipped specialty areas (Art room with huge double skylights and working kiln for ceramic and clay work; library with tremendous acoustics in oral reading area; gym with air-conditioning so we could service the various elderly homes in the area during temperature extremes; great acoustic music room; occupational and physical therapy rooms; large health suite).

The classroom design included what we called “shared” rooms in between the major classrooms. Our intent was to make these multi-purpose rooms (offices and work areas for specialists like speech therapists, reading, and resource room teachers) meeting and testing rooms, or even extra storage. The intent was met very successfully. Tile work in the corridors reflected curriculum themes and included such areas as trees and bushes, transportation vehicles, farm animals and sea animals, as well as alphabet letters outside classroom entrances. Young children are visual learners and this served that purpose nicely.

Plenty of teacher workspace was designed in proper places and has served the designed purpose. The cafetorium was designed with flexible tables that are easy to fold, easy to move, and easily replaced by folding chairs; the stage was built at appropriate height for the age group.

The school was built on an existing park and much of the park was retained along with hard play surface, climbing structure with soft, shredded tire base, and community gardens affording us the opportunity to work with the community gardeners to grow things from seed to plant.

The one item I wish we had included in the design would have been a second elevator. The building is 440 feet from front to back and a second elevator in the classroom wing would have afforded some welcome saving of steps. This is more of an administrative issue rather than a learning issue. I do feel that the coordinated designs that were put in place were well thought out by the various participants. This is the finest learning facility I have ever been associated with or that I have seen in visits during our planning stages. Visitors from the private and public sector have marveled at the design and its practicalness. My answer is always the same. When the various participants in the process listen to each other, the result is one that everyone can be happy with and in our case that has come to fruition.