Description

In the city of Atsugi, a suburb of the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolis with 225,000 inhabitants, the 2300 m² canteen on the eighth floor of a former office building was converted into a kindergarten with a day crèche. The city purchased the former commercial building to build a public-private mixed-use complex in the centre of Atsugi. The city’s concept envisages the kindergarten as a hinge linking the floors used for different purposes.

The situation the architects were faced with was chaotic, with a disorderly array of building services and technical equipment openly visible beneath the ceiling. The first step was therefore to strip the entire floor down to its structure. Due to the short construction period, the architects had to respond quickly and flexibly to conditions on the construction site. New insertions could only be made within the confines of the rigid structural framework. Accordingly, all services had to run openly beneath the concrete ceiling and along the columns and beams.

By creatively interweaving the primary elements – the columns, beams, building services and walls – the architects have created a spacious interior free of all superfluous fixtures. Beneath the five-metre-high ceiling, huge concrete walls in the form of amorphous clouds run through the interior, dividing it into the separate kindergarten, crèche, “park” and office areas. Resting on the light-coloured wood-parquet floor, the clouds span from column to column as screens that do not completely separate the spaces. The different-sized arches and openings in the “cloud walls” make them appear more like sculptural, perforated screens. Children can slip through the walls or climb over them, while adults can look over or walk through them. Each space appears to flow into the next. At the same time, the kindergarten is open to the other floors, which includes a department of the local public authority, a cinema and a supermarket. Together, the rooms form a kind of “park landscape” with differently defined zones which can be used both as a public place for lunch and play and also as an exhibition, seminar and event space.

Although the floor is predominantly occupied by children, a public and freely accessible “inner courtyard” provides a place for families, senior citizens or students to meet.

The variety of forms of the “cloud walls” in the kindergarten reflects the formal variety of clouds in the sky. Its open spatial structure gives it the appearance of scenery within a space of discovery: it presents an unknown adventure landscape that children can engage with, explore, play within, climb over, run around and hide in.

Originally published in Bauwelt 09.2015, pp. 22-25, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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