Three former school buildings are repurposed to create mini-campus for teacher education

A 100,000-sf mini-campus for teacher education is being created from three former school buildings at Winona State University in Winona, Minn. Once completed, the $25.2 million project will create a new section of campus and be home to the university’s College of Education.

Dubbed Education Village, the Leo A Daly-designed project retrofits three separate school buildings from different eras with learning spaces. The design creates learning environments that range from traditional classrooms with blackboards to advanced, technology-enabled active-learning classrooms, STEM labs, maker spaces, and special-education classrooms.

Education Village Rendering courtesy Leo A Daly.

The new mini campus includes Wabasha Hall, Wabasha Rec, and Cathedral School. Wabasha Hall is the new main hub of Education Village. It will function as a learning lab and gathering space with a large atrium, experimental classrooms, a child-care center, counselor-education facilities, and breakout spaces for group work.

Wabasha Rec is a former gym that will house physical education and adaptive-sports teaching programs. Cathedral School is a historic schoolhouse originally built in 1929. It will preserve low-tech classrooms relevant to the current spectrum of American schools and house post-graduate teacher-development functions, administrative offices, and the dean’s suite.

Site layout of Education Village designed by Leo A Daly Rendering courtesy Leo A Daly.

“By placing a diversity of learning environments into a range of different building contexts, the design helps prepare future teachers for anything they will encounter in professional life,” says Joe Bower, Senior Architect in Leo A Daly’s Minneapolis office, in a release.

Kraus-Anderson is the construction manager for the project, which is expected to be finished in time for the Fall 2019 school semester.

LPA Architects conducted a post-occupancy evaluation, or POE, of the eSTEM Academy, a new high school specializing in health/medical and design/engineering Career Technical Education, in Eastvale, Calif. The POE helped LPA, the Riverside County Office of Education, and the Corona-Norco Unified School District gain a better understanding of which design innovations—such as movable walls, flex furniture, collaborative spaces, indoor-outdoor activity areas, and a student union—enhanced the education program, and how well students and teachers used these innovations.

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