Teton County Children’s Learning Center – “The Ranch”

Front Entry (Photo: Roger Wade)

South Elevation (Photo: Roger Wade)

Lobby (Photo: Roger Wade)

Classroom (Photo: Roger Wade)

Classroom (Photo: Roger Wade)

Corridor (Photo: Roger Wade)

Surrounding Wetlands (Photo: Roger Wade)

Entry (Photo: Roger Wade)

North Elevation (Photo: Roger Wade)

(Photo: Roger Wade)

Architect

Ward + Blake Architects

Ward + Blake Architects was built on a distinctive vision: be provocative in thought, flexible in nature, and disciplined in execution. Since 1996, the firm has gained recognition for architecture that is sensitive to its environment and successfully integrated with its surroundings. Ward + Blake creates buildings that are tactile, modern, bio-climatically responsible, honestly expressed, technologically sound, and artfully crafted.

Ward + Blake believes that architecture should respond to its particular place and be a natural partner with the environment. The firm’s designs evolve from an appreciation for pragmatic solutions within the honesty of modernism. By working within the context of our environment and applying sustainable strategies to a wide variety of building types and project scopes, Ward + Blake designs architecture that conserves energy and natural resources while creating high performance buildings and healthy environments for the buildings occupants.

Project

Teton County Children’s Learning Center – “The Ranch”

Jackson, Wyoming / USA, 2011

DescriptionIn collaboration with Boston-based childcare design experts D.W. Arthur Associates Architecture (www.dwarthur.com), our team created a facility that explicitly educates and stimulates children through its design. With a threefold objective, the Rafter J Childcare needed to fit contextually into its ranch like neighborhood, achieve a minimum LEED Silver rating, and experientially stimulate its young users.

The education-driven program reflects DW Arthur’s design mantra that children learn through experiencing their environment: A ‘family-room’ concept with gently curving walls defines the main corridor in which children of different ages can freely interact, which then opens into private rooms that accommodate specific needs and ages. The interior’s child-focused design concepts also play out on the exterior with large glass expanses and clerestory windows that welcome ample natural light, and a rooftop play space for outdoor recreation.

Mining iconic design motifs such as beaver slides, time-evolved ranch outbuildings, and horizontally-slatted fence lines for inspiration, the 12,000-square-foot facility is cleverly broken down into smaller masses that reference these differing motifs. While a beaver slide-like enclosure over the stairway occupies much of the south elevation, it converges with a horizontally slatted wall that moves the eye easily across the structure.

Sensitive not only to its immediate residential environment, but to the natural environment as well, the building gets 50 percent or more of its energy from an onsite geothermal system, storm water runoff is controlled through sod roofs, and a computerized system efficiently controls natural and artificial light. The project exceeded the original design goal to achieve a LEED Gold rating.

Ward + Blake Architects
200 E. Broadway
Jackson WY 83002
Phone +1 307 733 68 67

architects@wardblake.com
www.wardblakearchitects.com

http://www.american-architects.com/en/ward-blake/en/domain:american-architects.com/catId:1/#