The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment

The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan

THE CENTER FOR EARLY EDUCATION CAMPUS REDEVELOPMENT

Johnson Favaro

ARCHITECTS
Johnson Favaro

AREA
10000 ft²

YEAR
2020

PHOTOGRAPHS
Benny Chan

CATEGORY
Educational Architecture

LOCATION
West Hollywood, United States

LEAD ARCHITECTS
Johnson Favaro

MANUFACTURERS
Skyfold, Metal Sales Manufacturing Corp., Mondo, Alucobond, Metro by Alucobond, Natural Variations by Armstrong

MEP
Integral Group

KITCHEN
Kitchen Professionals

LIGHTING
Darkhorse Lightworks

CONSTRUCTION
MATT Construction

ACOUSTICS
Waveguide, Waveguide Consulting

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
Nabih Youssef

CIVIL ENGINEERING
Sherwood Engineers, Sherwood Design Engineers

ART
Friedrich Kunath

IT
Waveguide Consulting

AV/IT/ACOUSTIC
Waveguide

AV
Waveguide Consulting

COST ESTIMATION
MGAC

CLIENT
The Center for Early Education

The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan
The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan

The Center for Early Education was founded in 1939 and has been located on its current site since 1946.

The Center is a socio-economically and culturally diverse independent school for children, including toddlers through grade six – a ten year experience from start to finish.

The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan
The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan

Having expanded incrementally over the years, the time arrived for the school to invest in its future on a site it had committed to remaining.

The school purchased adjacent property and created a master plan that established the parameters of a three-and-a-half-year construction project to rebuild two-thirds of its existing campus and expand it.

The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan
The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan

While doubling in size, the campus at completion will only have grown from one and a half acres to two and a half acres in a city where most elementary schools half their size reside on as many as five or six acres.

Two new buildings attach to an existing third building to create a single four-story building. The rebuilt school will occupy 10,000 SF and house approximately 540 students and 110 faculty and staff members.

The project is a model of compact development as an urban campus in a rapidly urbanizing area of southern California.

The new campus includes a gymnasium, auditorium, classrooms for early education, lower, and upper elementary grades, STEAM classroom, labs and maker spaces, parent work, meeting, and social spaces, rooftop playgrounds, and a central play field – all on top of a 185-car subterranean parking garage.

The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan
The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan

The project is a model of compact development as an urban campus in a rapidly urbanizing area of southern California.

The architecture of the school engages a busy commercial arterial on one side and a neighborhood street no the other.

The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan
The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan

It is inspired by the spontaneous expression of children’s art – folded and cut-out paper, alphabet building blocks, brightly colored surfaces, and simplified profiles of things found in nature like trees and flowers.

The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan
The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan

The recently completed first new building – the “La Cienega Building” – faces onto a busy commercial arterial running north to south from West Hollywood into Los Angeles.

At ground level, a 90 FT long vitrine houses a public installation by world-renowned artist, Friedrich Kunath, who worked with Center students to create the piece for dedication to the West Hollywood Urban Art Program.

The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
© Benny Chan

At upper levels, parent work and social spaces, such as the multi-purpose meeting room and third floor terrace, orient out to La Cienega Boulevard.

The second new building – the “Clinton Building”– currently in construction, will house all the early education programs at the ground floor, with kindergarten, first and second grades at the second floor, administration at the third floor, and rooftop playgrounds at the fourth floor.

This building will serve as the main entrance to the entire school and will feature a five-story atrium that connects a vestibule at the new below grade parking garage to the rooftop playgrounds at the fourth floor.


The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
Section East And West 2
The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
Section East And West 3
The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
Section East And West 4
The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
Section North And South
The Center for Early Education Campus Redevelopment
Section Partial Building East And West