Project Data:

Completion Date:     6/2/2025

Square Footage:      56000

Building Use:           Children's Museum

Project Description:

“The world in a nutshell”, Pretend City Children’s Museum offers a child-sized interconnected city environment where children can assume various real-world roles and let their creativity rule. 14 years after revolutionizing early childhood education in Orange County with a ‘Learn-through-Play’ approach, the Pretend City Children’s Museum will move from a warehouse, to a custom-designed ground-up museum space at the Great Park in Irvine. The new museum will provide 23 professionally curated interactive indoor learning exhibits, as well as 20,000sf of outdoor learning spaces, where children will be able to connect with their community, nature, and their environment, while developing their physical, social, emotional, and communication skills. The new museum building will offer much more than a unique educational playground for young visitors and their caregivers. The goal of the design team is to connect families to each other, creating community, both locally and regionally as a resource for expertise on and services related to early childhood development and education.

The Pretend City Museum project will initiate the next phase of redevelopment at the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, transforming it into one of the largest municipal parks in the country. The project site will serve as a gateway to the next phase of development, setting the tone and character for this phase of services and amenities coming to Great Park. Recalling the spirit of the World War II Era aircraft hangars, high-bay volumes of space and the clear long-span structural systems are ideal to build a pretend city for children. The design of the building expresses its function as well as Pretend City’s values. The regular frames of the efficient Pre-Engineered Metal Building structure create a cost effective and dynamic form that is informed by the operational needs of the museum as much as the environmental forces acting on it. Sited for optimal solar orientation, passive solar strategies have been implemented. Stormwater collection and management is highlighted as a feature space, becoming a naturalistic play space. While the steel frames on the south shape the prominent large volume of the column-free black box, which will serve as an Exhibit Floor, the frames on the north slope lower and extend into the entry plaza, creating an inviting shaded entry over the active public spaces of the Museum’s lobby, ticketing, and café.

The design of the site centers on the Pretend City’s tenet that diversity enriches children’s lives. Every element of a visitor’s experience to the site, from parking to the entry plaza, engages children and their caregivers in educational activities designed to foster a greater appreciation for biodiversity and sustainability. Stormwater retention areas double as whimsical nature playscapes, where children can connect with their environment in creative ways and witness natural processes, like pollination or water percolation, unfold before their eyes. The office spaces also provide the Pretend City staff and partners with a connection to nature, as the indoor work environment extends to an expansive programmed shaded patio to offer flexibility in work modes and settings.

Framework for Design Excellence

Design for Community:

Pretend City will become a resource for expertise on and services related to early childhood development and education. An Early Childhood Hub is designed to transform from a favorite community venue for birthday parties on school days to an event center for regional gatherings, such as annual Health and Wellness Fair, or Parent Symposium, on the weekends. The Family Resource Center will offer developmental screenings and serve as a library of materials and tools for families, caregivers, and educators of young children. The building will accommodate a wide variety of community partners in education and allied health fields, such as occupational or behavioral therapy, to deliver their programs and workshops. Partner spaces are provided for non-profit community agencies that share the goal of fostering early childhood development and education in Orange County and beyond. The design team worked hard to meet the diverse community and regional needs of Pretend City and give every visitor to the Museum a place they could call their own.


Design for Energy:

Due to the need for controlled lighting conditions in most museum spaces, the building naturally has a low window-to-wall ratio that reduces thermal transfer through the envelope. Most glazing is limited to areas protected from direct sun by roof overhangs. The rest of the building’s envelope is largely comprised of Insulated Metal Roof and Wall panels that exceed Title 24 requirements for insulation and further reduce building’s heating and cooling loads. Efficient LED lighting throughout the building will meet a goal of 25% LPD reduction from the baseline. Large roof areas accommodate a 275 KW photovoltaic system that offsets 86% of the annual energy use to meet the carbon reduction requirements of the AIA 2030 Challenge.


Design for Wellness:

The office spaces for Pretend City staff and partners were assigned an optimal location along the north side of the building, where diffused north light can enter the workspace through floor-to-ceiling glazing. Bi-folding doors connect the interior office spaces to the programmed patio. This seamless extension of the work environment to the outdoors affords the staff the flexibility of different work modes, while connecting them with nature and views of the rest of the Great Park. The indoor-outdoor workspace supports neurodiversity by balancing quiet zones for individual focus work with active “living rooms” for collaboration and amenities. Access to daylight and shade, acoustical privacy, and thermal comfort were all taken into consideration in the office layout.

Firm Name:              LPA, Inc.

Completion Date:     6/2/2025

Square Footage:      56000

Building Use:           Children's Museum

Location:                 Irvine CA

Design Architect:
LPA, Inc.

Associate Architect or Firm:
N/A

Landscape Architect:
LPA, Inc.

Owner / Developer:
Pretend City Children's Museum - Owner
Griffin Structures - Construction Manager

Engineer:
LPA, Inc. - Structural Engineer
LPA, Inc. - Mechanical Engineer
LPA, Inc. - Plumbing Engineer
LPA, Inc. - Electrical Engineer
LPA, Inc. - Civil Engineer

General Contractor:
N/A

Consultant:

Photographer:
N/A - On the boards project. No photographs used.