Alive Catholic Early Learning Centre

This charming early learning centre, co-located at Holy Family Catholic School, is an adaptive reuse of an existing classroom block that creates a welcoming, light-filled space for pre-schoolers.

Embracing the challenge of creating a cohesive, contemporary environment suitable for early learning, DesignInc utilised the characteristics of each building to create different types of functional learning. One building is used for administration, and another classroom is the three-year-old’s learning area. The former library, with vaulted ceiling and exposed trusses, contains a learning area for four to five-year-old children.

Location: Kaurna Country
Parafield Gardens, South Australia
Client: Holy Family Catholic School
Value: $1.4M
Scale: 565m²
Year: 2018
Project Contact: Shalini Shah
Photography: David Sievers
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Transforming an existing transportable building and the former school library building into a contemporary and cohesive early learning environment was a challenge for the project team from the outset. We worked diligently to ensure all spaces were finished to a high quality capturing an abundance of natural light with meaningful connections between indoor and outdoor play spaces.

Kitchen activities create the opportunity to integrate cooking into the learning experience in a hands-on manner. The careful consideration of materiality, joinery, colour, acoustics and lighting creates a playful, calm and nurturing environment. The neutral palette of timber, white and charcoal is enlivened with pops of blues and greens which highlight key spaces. Mobile furniture pieces allow every space to be highly flexible and reconfigurable to suit the day’s activities. Larger, open-plan areas for older children cater to group activities and encourage collaboration. Intimate areas for younger children can be partitioned for sleeping or quiet time.

Play spaces are woven between the buildings and create intuitive navigation between spaces. Landscaping and hardscaping provide a variety of outdoor shaded play areas and have direct connections to indoor learning spaces.