These disparate parts are effectively tied together by an elegant cladding of oversized, cream-colored brick, energy-efficient glass, and perforated aluminum fins, arranged in a variation of the Fibonacci sequence. Valerio’s solution pairs a steel-framed administrative wing-topped by a cantilevered, “look-at-me” library-with a restrained classroom wing that’s mostly framed in precast concrete. is something you could only dream about.” “Usually, they’re in homes or in other buildings that have been renovated. “Not many buildings have been built for our youngest children,” said David Magill, the Lab Schools’ director. That was a rare opportunity, and not just because the project had enlightened clients and a generous budget. Placing Earl Shapiro Hall a few blocks east of these friendly confines challenged Valerio to devise a fresh architectural framework that would simultaneously foster the school’s myriad traditions, such as piano-accompanied “sings” in the lobby, and open the door to even better education. For decades, Lab’s early-childhood learning facilities were ensconced in and around this school’s neo-Gothic enclave, about seven miles south of Chicago’s Loop, which housed pre-kindergarten to 12th grade classes. Before Barack and Michelle Obama became President and First Lady, they sent their daughters Malia and Sasha to Lab. The renowned educator John Dewey founded the Lab Schools in 1896, shaping a curriculum that emphasized “learning by doing” rather than relying on rote memorization. Though it doesn’t match Crow Island’s exemplary synthesis of civic presence and village-like intimacy, Earl Shapiro Hall still offers lessons for forward-thinking pedagogy. The building for pre-kindergarteners through second graders belongs to a tradition of Chicago-area education design for progressive schools that stretches back to 1940 and the Crow Island Elementary School in Winnetka, Illinois, by Perkins, Wheeler & Will, with Eero and Eliel Saarinen. The $52 million, three-story Earl Shapiro Hall, designed by Joe Valerio of the Chicago firm Valerio Dewalt Train Associates, with FGM Architects, is as notable for its commodious, carefully conceived interior as for its exterior’s exuberant expression. Like the institution it serves, the new early-childhood learning center of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools is anything but ordinary.
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