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Site Plan: SAR campus is situated on a leafy hill with beautiful views of the Hudson River.
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Main Entrance: Children, teachers and community walk into the building and feel the unique energy and philosophy of the school.
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Second floor: A roster of inclusive spaces for multiple modalities of learning and a diverse student body with varying needs.
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Third Floor: Commons are physical extensions of the classrooms; allowing teachers to expand activities beyond the class square footage.
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We deployed floor-specific color coding. This system works for young students to strategize and get the lay of their building.
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Transparency and openness between spaces in the welcoming entry to "The Hive". The principle and administrators can be reached easily by parents and students.
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Reading and collaboration Pods are intimate break spaces for small groups and individual students to think and learn in a quite and safe environment.
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Communal space with skylights is used throughout the day for different activities; arrival and dismissals, presentations, story telling, guest performances, indoor play space.
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Welcoming and positive messaging conveying the schools mission were selected by faculty. Arriving to school sets a positive tone for the rest of the day.
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The library is an activity center for group and individual learning. It offers comfortable seating and work areas to relax, read and research.
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View of a group collaboration/workshop space. Transparent elements delineate interior spaces, fostering flow and communicating a culture of clarity and candor.
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The educational garden inspires students to explore gardening and land stewardship. Aiming to cultivate a more passionate, compassionate and sustainable future driven by community values.
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The sensory commons helps students process the world around them based on personalized needs. Offering calm or stimulate exploration including a Lego wall, bubble tubes, climbing etc.
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The classroom is designed to create a learning environment that is engaging, flexible, safe and positive. We Customized furniture to support different learning modalities.
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The classroom combines spaces that support immersive learning for 21st century skills. Large openings allow students to view the outdoors, connecting them to their surroundings.
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View of the Hudson river from the roof playground
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Katherine Marks
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Katherine Marks
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Katherine Marks
PROJECT NARRARTIVE
For SAR’s new Early Learning Center, HSB architecture & Design focused on the school’s commitment to community values and openness to twenty-first century education. The ELC is situated within the Bronx’s urban grid, but its doors open into another world. The lobby greets students, faculty, and guests with the words ‘Curiosity’, ‘Excitement’, ‘Togetherness’; lighting, signage and lockers are hexagonal, alluding to SAR’s bee mascot and ELC’s nickname, “the hive”. In the building, classrooms face and connect to multipurpose common areas, allowing teachers to develop active “learningscapes” that extend beyond their classrooms. These modular commons support different learning modalities: students can access diverse setups primed for listening, seeing and doing. Beyond the building, Hudson river views, a rooftop playground and educational garden encourage students to explore outside. Everything in the building is easily accessible to children, and walking into the ELC is entering their world. To further engage students, the building is equipped with interactive smart boards, a tinker lab, an instructional kitchen, and an indoor sensory playground for inclusive play.
HSB designed the ELC interiors as an innovative learning facility to meet its occupants’ needs, and also inspire students and staff to grow beyond its walls and beyond their limits.
SAR- Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy
Category
Early Childhood School/Elementary School
Description
Owner
SAR Academy
Bronx, NY
Architecture Firm
HSB Architecture and design
Bronx,New York
https://www.hsbarc.com/
Photography By:
Katherine Marks
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