The Mosaic Pre-K Center at Hall of Science was honored in the 2024 Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) Design Awards. Fundamental to the scheme for the Pre-K Center was to feel the presence of the Park and its greenery both from inside the building looking out, and in the immediate site development around the building – play areas, sitting areas and landscaped areas – as it relates to the natural park setting beyond. To achieve this, precast panels with large cutouts for expansive windows were designed to enclose the east façade where 16 classrooms are neatly stacked in a grid, each represented by a single precast panel. Working closely with the precast fabricator, the design team was able to develop details for steel reinforced panels with very slender face profiles only 14” wide allowing for nearly full-length windows across each classroom. The windows, deeply set within precast panels and slightly angled in a sawtooth configuration towards the Rocket Park, have a pattern of colored terra-cotta tile surrounds inlaid in precast that relate to the accent color of each classroom.
The opposite is the case for the other end of the building. Rendered as a solid and composed of insulated architectural precast panels, each end of the building shares a deliberate compositional aspect that modulates throughout the rest of the school. The modular grid of white precast panels, broken down into ever smaller grids that derive from other surfaces around the building, including the composition of typical window bay mullions at classrooms. Embedded within this grid system are colorful terra-cotta tiles, seemingly random in pattern. The effect is a lively wall full of visual interest and texture which forms the background of an outdoor classroom on the south side of the building.
See all the 2024 PCI Design Award Winners here.