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In an issue of Journal RAIC (November 1965), the schools is described as follows: The school sits gracefully in a residential neighbourhood. Its dark brick, copper and wood exterior set in a landscape of evergreens is rich and, inviting. One feels this pleasant building must constructively affect the attitudes of its pupils.
Willow Park Public School should be a lesson to school boards and to their architects : that regulations inevitably surrounding school design do not necessarily imply a regimented building. Here is a school which has managed to escape the long, tiresome corridors, monotonous cellular repetition of classrooms and the generally factory-like approach so inappropriate to the education of young children.
Surely the learning environment constitutes one of the most important architectural challenges of our day. A building creatively meeting the challenge well merits th e Award of Excellence.
The required addition was modest in scale and forms a part of a larger exhausted and old public school.Our design attempts to re-energize the entire school and the community along the street by introducing a modernized exterior façade with attention to the details at the corners of the building, the recessing of the windows, angling of walls and the use of contrasting materials and colours. Source: Bortolotto Design Inc Website
These windows are larger than the standard so there’s tremendous opportunity to see in, and, of course, for those inside to see out so that there are immediate connections and context. They bring lots of natural light into the rooms which keeps these new learners, and their teachers, engaged, energized and feeling good.
...Our colleagues at Bortolotto Design Architect are working with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) on 15 projects rolling out this year and in 2014. At Willow Park Junior Public School where Bortolotto was tasked with adding two kindergart
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Issue 1: 2013
“ We want them[students] to feel success, even more than getting 90%, to come to and go home from school feeling happy”– Shelley Laskin, Trustee, Toronto District School Board
TDSB school webpageWillow Park Junior Public School (GR. JK-06) Respect, Responsibility, Success
Author - Toronto District School Board
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