Sweatt-Winter Child Care and Early Education Center

Including care and learning spaces for children newborn-4 is increasingly recognized as the purview of schools who traditionally have served primarily kindergarten through 12th grade students. CHA was hired to collaborate with the University of Maine at Farmington’s Early Childhood Education Center and Early Childhood Education degree program on the design and execution of their new early childhood learning center. Operating on a dual front, this center provides childcare for infants through PreK and serves as a pivotal lab school for students in the university’s teacher education program.

CHA conducted space planning and visioning exercises with nine different stakeholder groups, ranging from faculty and staff to students and parents, to ensure that all user group voices were heard and represented in the design process. These intensive information gathering activities allowed our design team to engage with end-users from all perspectives to create a strong vision reflecting the values of the university’s early childhood program. After three years of stakeholder input, design and construction, this vision was realized with the opening of the new nature-based center in the fall of 2023.