Accedi
Utenti registrati
The idea was conceived in close collaboration with LAUSD staff, who wanted an open, airy, bright addition to the well-regarded Wonderland Elementary School. The concept was developed in conversation with LAUSD faculty and the designers, and evolved into a playful, yet appropriately modest building. The designers are known for their colorful and graphics-forward approach to architecture, and were able to use sustainable choices and small-scale interventions here to create a building that is appealing to kindergarten children, staff, and parents alike.
Sustainability is vital to this project, which provides opportunities for children to learn about the natural environment and engage with energy-conscious building design.
Colored polycarbonate fins above a large roof opening bring the building to life with transitory rainbows of colored sunlight, evoking wonder and imagination.
The building’s form presents an appropriately modest face to the residential neighborhood. Colorful louvers ring the exterior façade, and the mass of the building gives way to playful swoops facing the campus interior that evoke movement and energy. The large sweeping roof overhang provides shade from the sun and shelter from rain, and creates an informal gathering area or “porch” that bolsters the feeling of community and vitality within the campus.
Classrooms feature ample natural light and curated views to the campus, surrounding neighborhood, and wooded hillsides. Partial open-ceiling areas of the classrooms reveal the inner workings of pipes, ducts, and structural beams to curious students. Large skylights and solar tubes punctuate the spaces and bring natural top-light into the rooms, reducing energy use while promoting student wellbeing.
The learning garden was an essential programmatic element, teaching children about sustainability as a fundamental approach to the world, and going far beyond recycling or material considerations. Ample natural light reduces the need for artificial light and energy use on the interior, and careful shading throughout also reduces the need for climate control during the warm summers.
Large skylights and solar tubes punctuate the spaces and bring natural top-light into the rooms, reducing energy use while promoting student wellbeing.
This new, sculptural kindergarten project provides two new classrooms, support spaces, and outdoor learning areas at an existing hillside public school. The design springs from the idea that “wonder” can be expressed in architecture that is simple, sculptural, light-filled, colorful, and full of unexpected moments for discovery.
The building’s form presents a modest face to the residential neighborhood. Colorful louvers ring the exterior façade, and the mass of the building gives way to playful swoops evoke movement and energy. The large sweeping roof overhang provides shade from the sun and shelter from rain, and creates an informal gathering area or “porch” that bolsters the feeling of community and vitality within the campus.
Sustainability is vital, which provides opportunities for children to learn about the natural environment and engage with energy-conscious building design. Classrooms feature ample natural light and curated views to the campus, surrounding neighborhood, and wooded hillsides. Large skylights and solar tubes punctuate the spaces and bring natural top-light into the rooms, reducing energy use while promoting student wellbeing. Custom playful storage cubbies, special “reading circle” nooks, and seating areas underneath the roof edge provide small-scale spaces to be enjoyed by young learners. Colored polycarbonate fins above a large roof opening bring the building to life with transitory rainbows of colored sunlight, evoking wonder and imagination.
The clients was absolutely delighted by the project.
Recognizing a common desire to create architectural environments that are simultaneously joyful, meaningful, and sustainable, John Friedman and Alice Kimm founded their design practice in 1996 in Los Angeles, where they discovered fertile ground for their ideas and aspirations. Since then, JFAK has completed a wide range of projects with notable public and private clients. In the process, they have been recognized with numerous distinctions including not one, but two, Rudy Bruner Silver Medal for Urban Excellence awards, the only firm to be so honored.
The firm employs a diverse range of tools, including skillful distribution of natural light; experimentation with materiality, color, and texture; celebration of transparency and visual relationships; repurposing of common symbols in new ways; and always, the restless exploration of form and space to create environments that people return to over and over again, even if they don’t quite know what it is that draws them.
