Once upon a time… there was a  very sweet preschool that needed to find a new home. They searched high, they searched low, they looked around every corner, under every rock, and in every nook and cranny of San Francisco. Lo and behold, they found a site shaped like a triangle right across from a festive city park in the beating heart of the Mission District! This little piece of land, nestled right up to where the Southern Pacific Railway used to rumble through San Francisco, gave them the courage to dream big and work hard day and night to make their dreams come true. 
Jackson Liles Architecture led community design workshops with the Mission Kids 

community to identify project priorities and worked extensively with the preschool 
directors to design a project that would provide a spacious, bright, and functional 
preschool environment under tight budget constraints.  The new Mission Kids 
Preschool serves 80-100 preschool children and infants in a 2-story structure with 
5,700 sf of interior space and a 2,500 sf outdoor roof deck play area. The project 
budget required an innovative approach to the design and careful selection of 
materials.   Each classroom connects directly to the exterior and has an adjacent 
outdoor play space, which ranges from a dedicated infant play courtyard, to a 
structured roof deck play area, to a large landscaped play yard nestled in between 
the 2 wings of the school. Sustainable features include materials to promote high 
indoor air quality, a highly efficient floor plan to minimize construction, a photovoltaic solar system, and high-quality durable finishes that will require little maintenance.  In addition, a connection to outdoor spaces is a primary design feature in alignment with the school’s philosophy.