From Jungle Gym to Outdoor Urban Playscape: Our Reimagined Backlot Takes Shape
Making the reimagined backlot a reality will require extensive financial support.
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However, once complete, this transformed space will enable Friends Select to serve the community in ways it never could before. “We have such a phenomenal opportunity at this moment, to create a physical environment that reflects our core values of inclusivity, stewardship, and community with this landscape. |
Friends Select School is reimagining the 16th Street entrance, backlot, and playground for its Parkway Building.
What began as a modest upgrade of playground equipment and the surrounding plantings has grown substantially—thanks to input from students, families, faculty, and staff—into a proposed dream outdoor playscape for the entire community. As perhaps the most publicly visible phase of the Advance Friends Select: Transformation Campaign, this project has the potential to bring the school’s physical transformation to the surrounding sidewalks and streets while simultaneously strengthening the connection between Friends Select and the city of Philadelphia. Still, this ambitious project requires major philanthropic commitments from our community.
A team of architects representing Metcalfe Architecture & Design, Studio Ludo, and OLIN analyzed feedback from intake sessions held during the 2022–23 school year with Friends Select students, families, faculty, and staff to create a beautiful conceptual design that symbolizes an inclusive Quaker community. “Those interactions and engagements were really helpful, especially with students,” said Demetrios Staurinos, RLA, ASLA, and an associate at OLIN. “We received an extraordinary amount of feedback.”
The resulting conceptual design is an expansive, multilevel structure, with universally accessible opportunities for play, socialization, and learning for students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. “Nothing lights up a child’s brain like play. The essential skills they need to succeed in our modern world—cooperation, collaboration, communication, compromise, and care—are all skills learned through play,” said Meghan Talarowski, PLA, ASLA, CPSI, founder and executive director of Studio Ludo. In building vertically, the design team increased the square footage of the backlot as well as the Parkway Building’s accessibility and circulation. “This project brings together the upper, middle, and lower schools, and is not just a space for the youngest students to use a playground,” said Christopher Kirchner, AIA, NCARB, partner and studio director at Metcalfe Architecture & Design. “It also features inherent educational opportunities and is more social in nature.”
Jaimin and Meena Shah P’27, ’30 were among the project’s earliest donors. They contributed to the original project, and they were delighted to see how the Friends Select community responded and reimagined this space even further, as their daughters seek spaces to hang out with friends and have small-group learning outdoors. “They are excited that the backlot would not just be a playground, but a flex space that has areas for structured games, creative play, outdoor learning, and reading nooks, in addition to traditional play structures,” said Jaimin. “They are also interested in how the re-envisioned space will ‘connect’ the Parkway Building with the STEAM Building.”
As an outward-facing representation of Friends Select’s ongoing transformation, the backlot design and its 16th Street entrance present an inviting community to the outside world. “The new space is a welcoming gateway for all who see and enter Friends Select, which allows us to shine even brighter on the Parkway,” said Meghan Fotopoulos P’28, ’30, ’31, whose family made a generous contribution to support the project. “Both current and future families can appreciate how this engages upper-, middle-, and lower-school students in ways we haven’t been able to in the past and will also allow Friends Select to utilize more broadly our rooftop space.” The Fotopoulos family hopes more members of the Friends Select community will join them so that construction on this project can begin in the summer of 2024.
Initial brainstorming for an updated backlot began before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the school’s use of its parking lot and playground for outdoor learning spaces inspired deeper conversations about the community’s needs for the future. “After returning from virtual learning and operating many classes and activities outdoors, the parking lot in the rear of the Parkway Building served as an outdoor classroom,” said Michael Gary, head of school. “This plan for the backlot is superior to our initial ideas for a new garden space and playground, and will better serve our students, families, faculty, and staff for the foreseeable future.”
Meena added, “So much of the Friends Select efforts in regard to ‘in the city and of the city’ are about getting our students connected to programs outside of the school walls. The backlot project would allow our students and teachers to extend learning outside traditional classrooms and into the natural goings on of the city.”
Making the reimagined backlot a reality will require extensive financial support from the Friends Select community. However, once complete, this transformed space will enable Friends Select to serve the community in ways it never could before. “We have such a phenomenal opportunity at this moment, to create a physical environment that reflects our core values of inclusivity, stewardship, and community with this landscape. The vision is far beyond ‘just a playground’ and allows creative, nature-based exploration, learning, and relaxation for all our students,” said Anthony Fotopoulos P’28, ’30, ’31. “We have been incredibly impressed by Friends Select’s ability to see, think, and plan long into the future while making things better today. We couldn’t be more thrilled that Friends Select has chosen now to try to make this vision a reality.”
“The Transformation Campaign is about creating and utilizing physical spaces that embody Quaker values to build a diverse, inclusive, and nurturing community for generations to come,” Jaimin said. “Aligning the use of this space in a manner that enables excellence in education, particularly for the youngest students where learning is playing (and vice versa), in a manner that enables learners of all types and invites others to participate, is an incredible opportunity for the school, the student population, and the broader community.”
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