The child daycare centre has been designed as a unique and individual building which nevertheless merges smoothly with the surrounding built environment. From an urbanistic perspective, the design concept is intended to give meaning and identity to this defined space – something special amid an everyday environment – without generating jarringly harsh contrasts. The new child daycare centre is located in an area with public facilities (education, sports).
Built on what used to be a miniature golf course, it forms an extension of Terenten’s built-up pedestrian zone. The centre will combine with the municipal offices, the sports hall and the neighbouring primary school to create an organic ensemble.
The differentiated building units have been designed in relation to the nearby primary school and their dimensions take into account the perception and identity of the child. The differently shaped “houses” help children get their bearings and understand the spatial and social organization of the centre. The children feel at home in “their” respective houses.
A new nursery school next to the University college of Arts and Crafts at Telefonplan, Stockholm. On the border between a former urban/industrial development and a small forest where new housing is being developed, this nursery school mediates between different contexts and scales. A semi enclosed entrance courtyard constitutes a first exterior space for parents and children meeting and leaving. The organic layout encourages movement as space becomes continuous and creates both exterior and interior rooms of challenging shapes. Windows are freely placed at different heights and allow for light and views to be adapted also to the scale of children, which further the relation between the interior and the exterior play ground and the wooded hill….Together with the client and the pedagogues’ inspiration from the Reggio Emilia school, a new way to organize the interior was developed. The result is a rather unorthodox plan, where instead of a complete ’flat’ for each group of children, there will be a large common interior plaza where the six groups can interact around different activities, playing and learning projects. This main space is complemented with separate atelier spaces for water projects and art, as well as small secluded group rooms for rest and quiet activities.
These seven colorful shipping containers traveled the world before settling down in Batu, Indonesia as the Amin Library. Home to 6,000 books, it’s a story in and of itself.
Imagine you’re a child. You’d be begging your mother to visit this magical place. Built upon stilts to overlook surrounding trees and houses, the eye-popping building serves two purposes—it’s both a library and a clinic for the town. And each brightly-hued container has a different program. For example, the blue one has entertainment books, the red is for science and technology texts, the green is the main lobby, and the yellow is the women’s reading room. The shipping containers were also a pretty economical choice as far as building materials go—they cost around $820 each. And have you ever seen a library that looks like this? Reading is all about unlocking the imagination, so we’d say this design is perfect for a place that’s home to thousands upon thousands of stories.
Munkegaards school in Gentofte, Denmark, was rebuilt a couple of years ago. Originally designed by the renowned Danish architech Arne Jacobsen, great care was put into modernizing the school for a new Century. Two main features of the new project is the very large underground new open workspace in direct contact with a range of labs (e.g. physics, pe, home economics, biology). Daylight is induced through a series of glass courtyards, sculpturally designed giving the place a very distinct character. The other main feature of the new Munkegaard is the original assembly hall which has been turned into a media centre and library where kids from 6-16 years can work on computers, check out books themselves, etc. and just hang out on and in (!) the shelves, on beanbag chairs, etc. The main structure is a U-shaped staircase for hanging out or for assemblies. Underneath all the books are ‘hid’ in a modern library cave where kids can dive into other worlds. The project was part of the SKUB project of Gentofte that I (Lene Jensby Lange) had the pleasure of being part of for seven years. The SKUB project featured several noticeable school projects, the best known being the ground-breaking Hellerup School with classrooms replaced by a variety of open learning environments.
As featured on coolboom.net, this bookstore in Sao Paulo deserves a little heads up! It’s a minimal design, but creates a comfortable and welcoming space for its customers. Set over three floors, one floor is entirely dedicated to children. The entrance is a particularly commendable feature, with the wall of books turning to create portals into the space. As we have worked for many years with Hughes & Hughes bookstores we are always on the look out for interesting new designs in this area
The six-level state of the art teaching and research building has some stand out architectural characteristics. Lyons created an undulating honeycomb-like facade on the rectangular building, where colorful angular components frame the windows. Towards the center of the building three of these components are outfitted with wood, and shoot out from the building to create an eye-catching effect. Lyons welcomed massive structural columns into the design by covering them with bright colors, then angling the columns to create huge X’s throughout the building, reminiscent of a jungle gym. Inside, researchers are able to conduct work in spaces full of a medley of vibrant colors, with an overflowing amount of natural light that filters in from the over-sized custom windows – making those long hours in the lab more do-able.
Mark Twain said, “In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” Mark Twain would have lost his mind if he saw these places.
Someone’s living room
The Liyuan Library near Beijing, China
The Mabel Fidler Building forms a new entry and centre for learning at Ravenswood School for Girls and functions as the central hub within the school environment.
The upper-level library, designed to ”float” atop a brick base, is clad in a polycarbonate material used for the first time on a non-industrial building in Australia, which permits its internal walls to be finished in translucent white glass that can be written on.
Its timber staircase, ”La Scala”, which connects the two levels can be used as lecture seating, with grandstand views out into the school’s sports field.
The building, which includes a seminar and study lounge, dance and drama rooms plus a cafe ”is an exemplar for advances in the relationship between education environments and contemporary learning’.
Swooping Bamboo Structure Is a Children’s Paradise
Take this incredible structure built by Dutch firm 24H-architecture as part of the Six Senses Soneva Kiri eco-resort on the remote island of Koh Kood, Thailand: it’s designed as a children’s activity and learning center, but the fantastic interiors are bound to impress even the most stoic grown-up.
the teikyo university elementary school in tokyo, japan, offers the appearance of a wooden school house in the bustling city. the 7,781.52 m2 learning space designed by kengo kuma and associates is a three-storey structure which features a large roof which spans the length of the building - its sloping nature changes the length and height of the eaves, responding to the establishment’s different programs and surrounding environment. the environmentally-friend plan, employs a device used to gather heat which faces to the south. this solar system warms air to circulate below it, venting through the floor during winter.
