Early Childhood Center project planners reach out to the local community and the ASH student body.
As the plans for the Ter Weer Early Childhood Center pick up speed, so too does the involvement of the ASH community and its neighbors. The students have been busy making their contribution to the sustainability elements, the staff received an update on the status of the project and how their input has been incorporated into the designs, and we had a wonderful opportunity to share an evening with the neighbors to view the designs.
On Wednesday, January 19th, the architects of the new Early Childhood Center project came to meet with the High School students and to judge their sustainability projects. The Grade 9 Science students undertook a project over a period of weeks, looking at sustainability measures for a live project, the Ter Weer Early Childhood Center. Mr. Hans Goverde and Ms. Annemiek Bleumink, Kraaijvanger Urbis, the Early Childhood Center architects, reviewed the projects online and then came to ASH to meet with the students and to select the winning ideas. The student projects were judged by the architects on the basis of their potential to be incorporated into the existing design of the facility, how far the students had stretched themselves in terms of developing their ideas to their full potential and thinking out of the box. The architects also looked at the attention paid to the use of resources to implement a sustainable solution. Taking 1st Place with their design for a grey water system and groundwater spring were Dimi, Mathieu and Kate; 2nd Place went to Julian, Lotte, Jake and Victoria for their design and interactive ideas for energy from solar panels, and 3rd Place was awarded to Berret, Ligia and Kalina for their ideas about an eco-friendly and interactive school environment with a focus on floor-heating. The 9th Grade certainly left an impression on the two architects who went away with some food for thought and certainly more than one new idea about how to make the sustainable elements of the project more visible for the younger students. The students will, no doubt, keep a keen eye on the development of the Early Childhood Center to see some of their ideas being incorporated into the new facility.
As part of the on-going communication with our neighbors, we hosted a joint New Year's Drinks Reception with Olympia'72 Handball Club on January 26th . As many of the neighbors have visited the school over the last number of months, we thought it would be nice to have everyone on site at the Handball Club to display the designs there, right where the project will be realized. Neighbors living in and around ASH, the Boerderij Ter Weer, the Handball Club and Adelbert College were invited to view the designs, meet with the staff of both ASH and Olympia '72 and to chat informally with the project team. With some 50 neighbors present, Mr. van Smirren, President of Olympia '72 and Dr. Spradling welcomed the guests and invited them to ask questions of the project team throughout the course of the evening. Mr. Henk de Greef, Alderman for Planning, Art and Culture from the Municipality of Wassenaar joined us for the evening along with ASH Board members and members of the Early Childhood Center Team. This was the third open invitation evening for the neighborhood and afforded everyone the opportunity to look at the designs and ask questions about all aspects of the project.
