La Jolla Country Day School Kindergarten Center

2009
La Jolla - CA

As part of a campus-wide master plan implementation, the Kindergarten Center incorporates four classrooms and play area as well as three specialized Lower School (grades 1-4) laboratory classrooms, exterior entry and play area improvements to the existing Early Childhood Center and a 70-space parking lot and loading zone. The new Kindergarten Center, which will be LEED Gold certified, shares some exterior areas and the parking/drop-off with the Early Childhood Center, a programmatic consolidation which increases convenience and ensures a higher level of security for faculty and parents.

Relating to its surrounding context, the Center is designed to bridge the step between day care and first grade both programmatically and architecturally. With a friendly, “homey”, residential aesthetic, the kindergarten classrooms relate to the younger children in both scale and form. The primary focus of the entire project is the quality of the interior classroom spaces. Designed to optimize daylighting and natural ventilation, the classrooms are also arranged in a functional and economical plan with adjacent core restroom and storage areas.

The lower school classrooms are organized to create a small courtyard for gathering and will act as the first phase of future lower school improvements. A linear walkway running north-south from the parking lot to the lower school relates the project to the rest of campus and acts as a physical separation between the grade levels.