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 New guidelines for public buildings make New York City schools a better place to grow up. June 2001
But at a new public day-care center in Queens, New York, a cheerful gray-and-yellow glazed-brick exterior frames an interior space containing quirky geometric benches and floors with whimsical tile mosaics. Light wells cast daylight down into the basement. The rooftop, made safe by an arching fence, serves as an additional play space. Cantilevered overhangs frame nooklike retreats, creating corners to play, think, or dream in. Even the flagpole seems friendly. The new Blanche Community Progress One Day Care Center, designed by Architrope/James Harb, is part of a hopeful trend: New York City's Department of Design and Construction (DDC), in conjunction with the Agency for Child Development, is raising the bar for public construction with nine new nursery schools. The buildings, which will collectively serve about 2,000 children, often stand out as bright additions to otherwise unchanged neighborhoods. "Children who face a lot of obstacles start their lives here," says Victoria Milne, a design program manager at DDC. "It means a great deal for them to have someplace worthwhile to be." The buildings are not only pretty, they're thoughtful too: the schools are designed by some of New York's better-known architects and some include green-design features such as high-efficiency air filters, thermal buffer zones, and radiant floor heating. They're also a sign of the city's recent transition to using green design in all of its public projects. With the publication of its High Performance Guidelines in 1999, the city adopted a set of suggested practices to make all of New York's public buildings more sustainable and efficient. "This is progress for public architecture; it's a meaningful shift," says Rick Bell, assistant commissioner of architecture and engineering at the DDC. "We're offering these kids some great places to be kids. Kids learn by osmosis. They care about what we teach them. Why shouldn't we offer them good design early?" Examples of this good design include the Williamsburg Day Care Center's colorful facade and soft turf yard in Brooklyn; the huge internal play space at LaVaughn Robert Moore Day Care Center, also in Brooklyn; and terraced play yards at the Concourse Village East Day Care Center, recently completed in the Bronx. A percentage of each building's capital fund is used to commission public art: as a result, each center has playful elements like mosaics or sculptures created by local artists. At Blanche Community Progress One, such things are making a difference. "Our last building had no windows--it was like night all the time," says Beverly Pitts, who teaches three-year-olds. "Children can adapt, but I did feel that it was very dreary; it weighed on me. This new facility is full of light, and when we first showed it to the kids, they lit up too." |
