CHILDREN’S CENTER AT CALTECH

with RIOS

Location: Pasadena, CA

Size: 12,000 sf building + 19,700 sf play area

Completed 2014

This LEED-Gold certified children’s center houses nine classrooms for up to 125 students ranging in age from six months to five years. The complex is a microcosm of the surrounding ecology, designed to illustrate natural processes and teach students about active and passive systems of environmental conservation.

At the heart of the childcare center lies the arroyo, a dry streambed carved into the site’s sloping contours. Filled with local granite, native grasses, bugs, birds, and lizards, the arroyo acts as a bioswale, filtering and dispersing rainwater collected onsite and stored in large cisterns. Through observation and play, the children learn about the preciousness of water in California’s arid climate.  The arroyo links and divides the play yards into discrete areas for children of each age group.

Three separate buildings distributed around the play yard contain the classrooms and administrative programs. Infant rooms are located in the quiet and lowest, southern end of the site, far from the adjacent tennis courts and buffered from parking lots by administrative and service wings. Toddlers congregate in the center of campus between the youngest and oldest residents. Pre-schoolers occupy the highest point, at the northern end of campus.