Architectural Record: LPA Designs a California School That Lets Nature Take Center Stage
Educational architecture is usually understood as a container for learning, but less common is architecture that also does the teaching. In San Bernardino, a multicultural, economically disadvantaged city in California’s Inland Empire, a new kindergarten building braids together pedagogical and sustainability principles for its young learners with both whimsy and rigor.
After the passage of a 2021 state law requiring many school districts to provide transitional kindergarten(TK), San Bernardino “had an aspiration to create a TK–preschool that could be much more than the typical modular buildings that you’d see on campuses,” says Ozzie Tapia, design director of education practice at LPA Design Studios, the firm tapped for the project.
The 15,300-square-foot Cardinal Child Development Center is appended to the city’s public high school, located on what was once agricultural land dotted with mature eucalyptus, cedar, and pine trees that Tapia calls the “gift of the site.” After determining the trees had longevity, the project evolved into one of arboreal preservation that could contribute to a nature-based learning program for the students. “We created a diagram of ‘no-fly zones’ that the building had to work around,” Tapia adds.
The result is a clever accommodation of environmental constraints. Webbing out from the U-shaped building that houses the classrooms and community spaces is a steel walkway canopy wrapped in a wood rainscreen that undulates to avoid or encompass the existing tree trunks. In doing so, it creates a partially covered courtyard hosting a range of interactive spaces for kids to play, relax, eat,and learn. Here, the project’s signature marbling of sustainability and pedagogical principles is on bright display: a pollinator garden, an outdoor-dining patio, and a reflective pond planted with local flora echoing regional landscape features like grasslands and the rare superbloom. Punched through the winding canopy is a circular, sun-filtering oculus, where students can comfortably gather.
