The Blake School’s Early Learning Center in Hopkins, Minnesota, was designed to make the building itself part of the learning experience. Designed by HGA and completed in 2023, the facility serves 165 students from prekindergarten through first grade and helped consolidate Blake’s previously separate Lower School programs. The approximately 35,700-square-foot building reflects the school’s Reggio-inspired approach to early education, which emphasizes exploration, collaboration, and a child’s relationship with the surrounding environment.

That philosophy is evident throughout the building. Classrooms have direct connections to outdoor spaces and the adjacent Blake Forest, a state-certified teaching forest and outdoor classroom. A multilevel commons serves as the heart of the school, bringing together spaces for dining, gathering, teaching, and reading. A broad wooden stair doubles as seating and is paired with a slide, while a lofted library overlooks the dining area. Child-height windows, daylight from sculptural rooftop light monitors, bold colors, and grade-specific environments—including field, forest, and treetop levels—help make the building easier for young students to understand and navigate.

The Early Learning Center also serves as a case study in integrating sustainability into K-12 design. HGA used a hybrid structural system incorporating exposed glulam beams and columns, allowing the timber to become both an architectural feature and a teaching tool. The all-electric building uses geothermal heating and cooling and has earned LEED Gold certification. WoodWorks identifies it as Minnesota’s first all-electric, zero-emission non-collegiate educational building.

Resilience was incorporated into the educational program as well. Rather than creating a separate storm shelter, the design team incorporated the required shelter into the school’s 3,000-square-foot movement studio, using a specially engineered glulam-beam and concrete roof assembly. HGA served as architect and structural engineer, with Mortenson as general contractor. The Early Learning Center was part of a broader $27 million campus project that also transformed the existing Lower School building into an Upper Elementary facility for students in grades two through five.

Watch the video for a closer look at how the project uses mass timber, daylight, color, landscape, and child-scaled design to create an early learning environment centered on discovery and connection.