Design Guides Students at Goodwin College Early Childhood Magnet School

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — Svigals + Partners, based in New Haven, Conn., recently celebrated the opening of the new Goodwin College Early Childhood Magnet School in September. The school was created for students in Goodwin College’s growing child study and early childhood education programs to use as a laboratory space, according to Dean Alan Kramer.
The new school is a 34,000-square-foot structure housing young PK-K students. Fusco, based in New Haven, was the general contractor for the project.
The overall goal of the project was to develop a space based on the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy for early childhood education. The building’s architecture is focused on promoting and enhancing the various facets of the model, with a special emphasis on the interplay of aesthetically pleasing spaces and the beauty of the natural world. Using locally sourced landscaping materials and native local plants helped the design team reach this goal.
The building itself was designed around a central gathering space, the Atelier. Four classroom pods branch off from the Atelier. Several themes link the four pods together. Each pod is like a contained village, with a colorful Connecticut leaf theme — Maple, Oak Beech or Tulip — distinguishing each one. “In the Atelier all of the colors of the four pods are represented so the kids can follow the color paths of blue, green, yellow and orange or the leaves to their village,” said Barry Svigals, managing partner at Svigals + Partners.
When commenting on the success of the project, Svigals said that the pre-design programming session was especially useful. “The successful implementation of this pre-design approach broke down barriers and created a common language for everyone who would be involved in the project,” he said. “In this case, the collaborative process included a group dance exercise with the client, engineers and other team members.”
The group also employed the Reggio Emilia philosophy during the design phase: “Images were scattered all over the floor and each person picked up one that moved them in some way. They went around the circle and described their feelings related to the pictures — getting each person in touch with themselves physically, emotionally and intellectually,” Svigas said.
In terms of setbacks, Svigas mentioned the site itself was a challenge. He explained that there was no free space anywhere on the site, which meant that the project team had to work to clear a space for the new building. “The site was challenging because of the adjacencies to the highway and the existing Willowbrook School. Sound and views [posed another difficulty] because of [the] nearby highway,” he said.
The team managed to circumvent these issues with relative ease. Glazing was installed on the side of the building to help limit the noise coming off the highway, and the school’s presence on the side of the road helps create a calming presence as drivers pass by, according to Svigas.
Construction on the project lasted from July 2012 until August 2013. The school was designed to meet the LEED Silver standard, and complies with the Connecticut High Performance School guidelines.