Description

Berlin town planning constraints dictated a three-storey form for this new daycare centre. This would be very unusual for an early years building within the UK and deemed to be unsafe. However, here it seems to work well, providing an economical high density solution which through its clever manipulation of form appears on the outside like an urban villa, whereas on the inside it has a light, spacious feel with its subtle volumetric play between solids and voids. At no point does it feel institutional, rather it is an ordered yet playful environment, as if it has been devised by a child manipulating a set of Froebel play blocks.

The architects admit to designing a building for play. There are clear practical requirements to provide a number of self-contained group or activity rooms each of which is age-related with the youngest children at ground floor level and the oldest children on the top second floor, a sense of hierarchy is established. Each pair of rooms supporting the age groupings has its own shared bathroom. Children’s cloakrooms are located within the activity areas. The administrative offices and shared group spaces are on the ground floor around the secure entrance loggia.

Within the central core of the block at each level there is a cut out U shaped courtyard or terrace area connected via external stairs to the next level. At the top of the building the terrace appears on the west side and is very open like a roof terrace. The next level down the terrace steps across to the centre of the building following the staircase down and is much more enclosed. Finally at ground floor the terrace becomes a huge covered play area cut out of the block now located on the east side of the building. It is a natural extension to the children’s garden particularly useful on rainy days. Children (under adult supervision) can promenade around the building with confidence; it is readily understandable and highly legible yet holding within it a sense of intrigue, which encourages exploration and extends spatial understanding.

The external treatment supports this legibility by means of coloured render with horizontal banded windows stepping back from the flat-faced façades. A further element of this composition is the projecting bay windows. They bring a sense of spatial variety, as each balcony/bay is ranged across the three-storey street façades. From the outside they express the sense that this is a building for children as well as for their adult carers. However, the bay windows are also highly functional. Each activity area has one of these bays scaled to the height of a child; smaller groups of children can withdraw from the main activity areas and into their safe elevated little playhouses high above the street.

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Originally published in: Mark Dudek, Schools and Kindergartens: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2015.