A Garden Where Children Grow
GreenAssociates, Architects
A Garden Where Children Grow.
Placement of furnishings and equipment create rooms within a room.
Grass green carpeting, stepping-stones and streambed, mimic site's natural features.
Location of lighting fixtures visually subdivides the space.
Wooden ceiling is rendered cloud like by a soft, mottled white stain.
New combinations of standard library furnishings enhance functional and visual characteristics.
Cottage-in-the-woods Reading Loft creates a visual destination for young readers.
Woodlands mural enlivens the space while disguising structural elements.
Additional Info:
In order to minimize the distraction of the room's narrow internal dimensions, a number of visual devices were employed to foreshorten and shape the new LRC space. By using the fixed elements of the room-window bays, pilasters, roof beams-new furnishings were strategically placed in alignment with them to visually subdivide the room. Reinforcing this alignment were graphic insets in the carpeting and the placement of the new ‘X' light fixtures. To visually heighten the room, the ceiling of wooden planks and glu-lam beams was stained a soft, mottled white that render a cloud like appearance. The upward wash of light from the new fixtures played on this surface and gave the ceiling a much softer, less defined look.
The floor was covered with grass green carpet interspersed with graphic representations of stepping stones and a small stream-the same natural features that occur on the school's grounds. The locations of these organic shapes were carefully selected to fully complement the new lighting patterns of the room.
Continuing this strategy of divide and improve, the LRC furnishing were next addressed. Standard library furnishings were mixed and matched and new configurations achieved. Working with both the manufacturer and the contractor, a new ‘cottage in the woods' themed reading loft-complete with a wooden bridge over the ‘stream'-was placed on one end of the room. The loft was embellished with its own tree trunk and canopy to visually tie it to the room's new full length mural on the cinder block wall opposite the windows. The mural is of a prairie woodland. The artist made clever use of the wall's structural pilasters by depicting them as the trunks of trees, some with inhabitants.
New casework and bookshelves were placed to complete the visual reshaping of the space. The crowning piece of the new LRC was a unique, hand crafted willow wood rocking chair. It was located in the reading area for the teacher's use during story time. In complete harmony with the theme of the building, it is a fitting accent piece for the school district's new "garden where children grow".
Wall Mural done by a local artist
A Clear Story