Description

As the Chinese economy gears up for the development of its industrial base over the next ten years, the need for childcare is becoming increasingly urgent. Many new childcare developments are exploring an approach which emphasises functionality, with relatively large child numbers, wrapped up in a sympathetic child-orientated architectural form and usually located close to new residential areas. What makes these early years facilities particularly distinctive is their separation from the school; instead they are designed as stand alone institutions. One of the most recent is this 180 place nursery and daycare facility at the entrance to the New Riverside development in the suburbs of Shenyang in the northeastern province of Liaoning. A constrained site has necessitated a tightly organised arrangement which fits well into its semi-urban setting. According to designer Ma Tao, three principle constraints dictated the planning strategy. Firstly the tight site, secondly the need to optimise south light for internal and external activity areas and finally the residential building which blocks the further development of the kindergarten on its northern end. As a result the building was arranged around a courtyard yet only on two sides.

Conceptually, the designer viewed this as an exercise in urban design, describing it as a castle or a toy house. With three storeys of classroom activity areas on the south side and a two storey block on the north side containing two identical classrooms, all stacked one on top of the other it is easy to understand why. The third element is a linking eastern block which acts as the main communal hall just inside the entrance. It is an almost monumental double-height space with gigantic window-roof lights orientated directly onto the courtyard garden. There is a play of large scale set against smaller and smaller scale parts, all the way down to the children’s play houses in the activity areas. The choice of façade materials is intended to enhance the idea of the city as collage, with a mixture of red-brickwork and yellow render mingling with large panel bay windows. Other twists such as an elliptical oval shaped access ramp which forms the southeastern corner of the block provides appropriate distractions for the users. This ovoid is directly over the entrance lobby, the concave and convex forms play against each other.

The nine classrooms are set out in regular bays each with angled bay windows orientated to the southeast to optimise daylight. There is a sense of rhythm to the façades, with a horizontal emphasis with indented mini balconies, small-scale windows and extract unit feature panels connecting the vertical emphasis of the stacked classroom units. This building illustrates the tentative nature of designing for children in China. It is playful yet serious and functional at the same time. Every child can develop their own particular view of the building, its internal spaces, its external details and its imagery. However, there is something of a mismatch between the architecture and the interior design resulting in some strange junctions and difficult relationships between inside and outside. Yet this should not distract from the fresh vibrant spirit of the architecture itself.

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