Early Learning

Center at

Skinner

Elementary

Client

Buffett Early Childhood Fund

Location

Omaha, NE

Completion date

January 2016

Encompassing 26,000 SF of educational and support spaces, the Early Learning Center at Skinner Elementary features flexible classrooms and multipurpose indoor and outdoor play areas.

Education

Omaha Early Learning Center provides outcomes-based education for at-risk parents and their children. As an organization committed to helping learners from birth to age 3 grow up safe, healthy and eager to learn, Omaha Early Learning Center looked to RDG to design a space that could support concurrent delivery of both education and community care.

e Early Learning Center at Skinner Elementary in Omaha, Nebraska. Photos by Tom Kessler.

Natural light penetrates from above into the hallways to the classrooms.

Connecting large gross motor space with the natural surroundings.

Transparency in the design allows for continual observation of the young students, while the building's clerestory corridors bring in abundant natural light, creating strong connections to the outdoors. RDG's design also incorporates administrative and consultation areas to support the center's parent education programs, and lounge and resource spaces for educators.

Outdoor spaces to engage exploratory, social and gross motor activities.