CSU Stanislaus Child Development Center

An orchard-inspired early learning environment that nurtures curiosity, imagination, and discovery.

Located in California’s Central Valley, the CSU Stanislaus Child Development Center serves three age-grouped classrooms—infants, toddlers, and preschoolers—through a design inspired by the surrounding agricultural landscape of fruit and nut orchards. EHDD’s design evokes the experience of playing beneath a grove, with a deeply cantilevered, undulating roof canopy that provides shade and dynamic outdoor learning space.

From a child’s perspective, the building is full of wonder. High clerestory windows cast light through a branching structural truss, creating shifting shadows and reflections across faceted walls. The entry features panels of dichroic glass, refracting light in ever-changing colors to signal that this is a space of imagination and growth. Corridors maintain views to landscape on either end, blurring the boundaries between inside and out.

The site is also a teaching facility for the university’s Child Development major, with integrated observation rooms for faculty and students. The landscape reinforces learning and seasonality with regionally significant fruit and nut trees planted at each classroom, a kitchen garden, and a teaching kitchen that completes a farm-to-table learning cycle.

As the first new project in the campus’s southwest quadrant, the facility is designed to be net-zero or net-positive with a 156kW rooftop PV array and fully independent HVAC systems—positioning the center as both a sustainable and pedagogical model.