The spaces at Stadacona are comfortable, beautifully detailed and full of welcome surprises
It’s morning recess at Stadacona School, and a rowdy game of kickball is taking off by the front entrance. A group of primary-schoolers sends a ball careering off the yellow-brick walls and into the Quebec City school’s front door.
This handsome, playful composition is the first building to be realized by Lab-École, a not-for-profit that aims to improve school conditions in“In our society, we don’t perceive the value of design,” said Pierre Thibeault, a prominent architect who is one of Lab-École’s volunteer leaders. “Here, very simply, we think it’s possible to create a good environment for teachers and students – and that we must.
Which makes Stadacona a welcome surprise. Its spaces are comfortable, beautifully detailed and full of welcome surprises. Other kids raced up a staircase to the third floor of the building, where a rooftop terrace offered its own territory for ballgames and active play on a built-in slope. The bell rang, and we followed the students inside to a cloakroom lined with birch plywood; the kids found places for their outdoor gear before heading back to class.
A team led by two education professors at the Université du Québec à Montréal is studying the impact of the first six Lab-École buildings on students’ well-being.The logic of this sequence was no accident. Mr. Lapierre designed the facility in close consultation with the Lab-École team and with school staff.
Is that a lot? Mr. Thibeault counters that the usual budgets are much too low. This argument could equally apply to schools in Ontario or Alberta, where a school and an industrial warehouse have similar budgets. In addition, the Lab-École team makes an appeal to long-term efficiency: Modest upfront costs are negligible over the life of such a building, in which most of the expense stretches out over half a century.
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