HSSU, ECPEC
William S. Clay Early Childhood Center
Saint Louis, MO

This University campus is located in an area of the city where the presence of "erasures" is as prevalent as the scattered buildings. These voids, true traces of a complex contemporary condition inspire the site strategy: to occupy the full area of the site with a white blanket covering the terrain and flowing with the gentle changes in the topography, a low building which quietly claims the prominent position of this site in the campus.

Two rings, an inner one of classrooms and an outer one of support spaces embrace a double courtyard (open, covered) where the children play. This courtyard articulates both programmes, one for the care of young children and the other for the graduate education of students.

We sought maximum transparency and protection for this building made of the two components which must be simultaneously linked, but completely separated from one another. The children's facility is accessed from the west boundary of the site, while the graduate school faces the campus (eastern boundary) and sits above the children's school.... The tenuous, yet powerful relationship between the built and the erased, or the figure and the groud, so prevalent in mid-western cities, is registered in the genesis of the project as a positive source of inspiration.

Area: 57,000 sf

LuchiniAD, Architects
Adrian Luchini, Principal
Ryan Daniels, Peter Elsbeck
KAI, Architects of Record
Don Koppy, John Cahill, Pamela Todd
Sam Fentress, Photos