Southside Early Childhood-Let the tilting begin!

November 20, 2013.
Southside Early Childhood center reaches major milestone.

A major step forward as the long awaited tilting of the tilt walls start. While work was suspended today do to the rain, Wednesday marked a real milestone for the project with the first walls being tilted up. The walls have been cast and cured laying down. Now they are being tilted into position. Construction on the building shell should proceed rather quickly as Rhodey Construction and the tilt wall contractor Fenix work through the process of tilting the cast concrete panels. The panel system being used incorporates thin brick and form liner stone as well as integral walls insulation. This is a highly efficient and robust construction assembly which should serve the new SSECC for many years into the future. Southside has been provide service in South St. Louis for over 128 years. The new building will help them continue these incredibly valuable community support for generations to come. Oculus Inc. designed the new facility. Aedifica Case is the structural engineer. CEDC is the Civil. Cole is the landscape Architects.

Link to Fox news story!

Panels along Jefferson

Jefferson side of Corner

Panels along Russel!

View toward South Jefferson

View From Alley

Stabilizers

Looking North on Jefferson!

Design Moving Forward for New SouthSide Early Childhood Center

 

Oculus Inc. is finalizing the design for the new SouthSide Early Childhood Center to be located on South Jefferson in St. Louis Missouri. We are in the final stages of design working with our Construction Management Partner, Rhodey Construction, to create a high value facility to support SouthSide’s ongoing support of our community. The design of the new center remains true to the design presented to the St. Louis Development Corporation some time ago and replaces some dilapidated buildings and a former Taco restaurant that was being used as a bank. Right now, the design and facility planning team is working through the process of determining final systems configuration, making budgets adjustments and working out the last details require for construction. The new center will include licensable classroom space for up to 140 children, full service kitchen for preparing meals from scratch, interior play area and multi-purpose space, playgrounds for infants and toddlers as well as a natural playground for the preschool children.

A key element of the design was investing the new facility with historical attributes and infilling the empty space in the built fabric of the urban environment. To accomplish this task, the building is sited along the street where a series of residential and commercial buildings once stood. The scale, massing, and design of the new facility are designed to make the new facility a good urban neighbor while serving as a key visual anchor to the south city neighborhood.