Sillers Center at St. Mary's School

A Space Where Wonder Does the Teaching

In Aliso Viejo, CA, a new education center serving early childhood through middle school students had to do more than open its doors. It had to embody a philosophy. St. Mary's School, an IB-accredited independent school with a mission rooted in "World-Sized Hearts, World-Class Minds" wasn't looking for furniture. They were looking to manifest their values in physical form.

Their new Sillers Center including the Thompson Family Early Education Center is the result: a two-story learning environment where every space, every material choice, every surface, and each piece of furniture is in service of every learner using it.

Project Highlights

Client: St. Mary's School
Project: Sillers Center and Thompson Family Early Education Center
Architect: RGA Architects
Interiors: One Workplace and St. Mary's School
General Contractor: Oltman's Construction Company
Furniture: One Workplace
Account Manager: Lori Darrah Jones
Learning Environments Designer: Gabriella Cannon
Project Manager: Shanta Wilson
Customer Support Specialist: Dinah Garcia

New 28K SF Sillers Center, including:
Thompson Family Early Education Center (ground floor, 10,000 sq ft)
Design Center / STEAM Hub (second floor)
Welcome Café and Vlok Family Lobby
Indoor/outdoor learning areas and student gallery

Early childhood and middle school learning environments furniture and custom solutions from Natural Pod, VS America, Custom Educational Furnishings, Steelcase, Smith System, Fomcore, SitonIt, Muzo and more..

Full furniture specification and space planning throughout the Sillers Center, including:

Thompson Family Early Education Center children's learning furniture
Design Center / STEAM Hub flexible seating, tables, desking, and lab stools and tables
Welcome Café and Vlok Family Lobby lounge and reception furniture
Administration area desks and seating.
Indoor/outdoor learning areas and student gallery

Photography by Oltman's Construction Company and St. Mary's School

The Curriculum Comes First

St. Mary's Early Education Program (EEP) serves children from age two through Early Kindergarten within the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programm (PYP) framework, one of the most rigorous and intentional approaches to early childhood education in the world. The EEP is also aligned with NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) guidelines, ensuring that every classroom practice, and every physical environment, meets the highest developmental standards.

In the PYP framework, the physical environment is not a backdrop. It is the "third teacher." Children are expected to move through space with agency, to manipulate materials freely, and to co-create the character of their learning environment over time.

That's a tall order for a furniture specification. And One Workplace rose to it.

Two Programs. One Building. One Vision.

The Sillers Center houses two distinctly different programs, and the design honors that difference at every level. On the ground floor, the 10,000-square-foot Thompson Family Early Education Center serves preschool through Early Kindergarten students in classrooms filled with natural light, warm wood tones, and eco-friendly furniture. Teacher-to-student ratios range from 1:6 to 1:8, and every design decision reinforces those close-knit, relationship-centered learning conditions.

Upstairs, the Design Center shifts entirely in register. Height-adjustable tables and stackable stools serve project-based learning spaces, reconfigureable in minutes. Each room is tailored to its function, wood laminate in the art studio, butcher block in the Maker Garage, custom casework in science inquiry rooms, while maintaining a cohesive visual language throughout.

Since opening, the Sillers Center has done something beyond its square footage. It has become a powerful expression of what St. Mary's believes about children, and a compelling reason for families to invest in the school.

Enrollment has grown. The community has rallied. And for Shelly Harmon, an educator who lives in this space every day, the transformation is felt in ways harder to quantify.