CONTEXT
A complex of design strategies configures
the solution for the project. The intent was to establish a sense of openness
and freeplay for a program involving the guidance and education of young
children, as well as serve the Parish at large as the Parish Center. The
proposed architecture endeavors to mediate the imposition of authority over
developing youth by calling into question the role that architecture plays in
structuring a learning environment. The site of the renovation is within an
existing and highly active gymnasium on a church campus. The preschool is
situated on the ground floor of the 1975 structure. The Program required 2
large spaces sub dividable into 2 classrooms each, a fifth classroom to double
as a community room, an art room, office, lobby, toilets and storage. A new roof was required, as well as a new
HVAC system, additional sprinkler heads, new windows and a renovated entry
canopy. The interior area renovated is 3,780 sq. ft. Construction commenced on
June 8th, 2001 and the facility opened on September 24, 2001.
STRATEGY
The use of merely vertical walls was
called into question and instead all surfaces are “activated.” All vertical
elements in the project are designed to engage and facilitate function and use
in the project. Instead of walls merely dividing space, the activated surfaces
in this project absorbed function (shelving and storage as well as human
geometry). These hyper-surfaces also offered function (display zones and other
interpretive surfaces). Further, the entire space was comprised of two
horizons: one at 3’-6” for the (developing) youths and the other at normal head
height for adult (guardians).
There are two major zones in the space
establishing dialectic between the general categories: “secular” and the transcendent/abstract. The
first zone originates at the front door and ends at the opening of the gallery
hallway. This secular zone is an area
codified by the warm colors bands imbedded in the floor design (from red to
yellow). This zone denotes bodily and tactile
sensory experience. The curvature of the lobby wall and the fragmentation of
the art room establish a free-play of sensory experience heightening the
physical (haptic) experience of the space.
The second zone, which contains the classrooms, entails more
(conceptual) abstract/transcendent experience.
These spaces are more cerebral and suitable for structured activities of
learning. The cone at the end of the hallway, establishes the religious
metaphor of an “angel,” and a geometrical origin organizing a radiating ceiling
design system of concentric circles that hovers above the three classrooms. The
children and instructors enter the classrooms through the angel (cone) and are
“watched-over” by the radiating circles overhead that organize the lighting
scheme in the subtly stepped ceiling. This strategy establishes an “angelic
presence” over each of the classrooms organized by the centrality of the cone.
MEDIA
A color spectrum from red to purple
organizes the color scheme for the entire design. Instead of selecting a
limited range of colors for this program, the color strategy is to provide “all
colors” for the children of the preschool, inasmuch as within the Catholic
teachings, “God promised the children a rainbow.” The windows on the outer edge
of the building establish the color bands that are carried into the space and
integrate and collide with the shaped forms. Side emitting fiber optic cables
are embedded in the vertical slots of the windows, under colored acrylic panels
affixed to each window edge, denoting a color assignment for each aperture. The
curved acrylic fins are designed to connote and facilitate the combined figure
of an adult guardian and a small child as one bonded figure. This relation
between the two human forms suggests precisely that—a relationship, instead of
an imposing objective governance.
HYPERSURFACES
Whereas the relation between form and
media are not literally overlaid in this design scheme, there are innumerable
moments in the overall space where color and form interfuse. Each of these
moments where unexpected and unpredictable, giving over instead to a free play
of color and form. The color bands do
not touch all of the surfaces (plan to elevation) in the space but they have
affect. This play of color and form, (media and surface) in the manner that
they are not always commensurate is called Hypersurface.