From the 2023 Educational Interiors Showcase: North Kansas City Schools Early Education Center

The North Kansas City Schools Early Education Center is home to nearly 1,000 early childhood learners. The design team was challenged to turn vacated strip mall retail space—a cavernous, dilapidated big-box store—into a colorful, welcoming, and child-friendly environment.

To break down the scale of the building and strengthen a sense of community, the design creates smaller, more intimate neighborhoods, or “pods,” each with a biophilic theme. Each neighborhood provides easy access to distributed resources for educators and students, to reduce transition time and recapture that time for learning.

Read more about the North Kansas City Schools Early Education Center and view a photo gallery at SchoolDesigns.com.