Play with Kindergarten

Key Idea

Over the years, there has been a lot of research on the design of preschool education space, but almost always separate the content (preschool education) from the outer shell (environmental space), and the environmental space has become a bystander of preschool education. This plan will encourage the preschool education environment to directly participate in all links, levels and directions of preschool education, so that children not only use it in daily life activities, but also play with it. In this process, children’s physical, psychological, and cognitive characteristics are combined, through the necessary sensory stimulation, visual guidance, morphological perception, language expression, interest stimulation, encouragement of exploration, and concept formation to achieve the purpose of promoting the active development of children’s physiology, language, cognition, and emotion.

This kindergarten encourages children to actively use limbs, fingers, language, expressions by means of architectural form, space organization and so on. It can combine factors such as site topography, sunlight, and weather changes to form indoor and outdoor spatial environment and landscape effects to make children better observe and feel natural information well, learn life skills in daily activities, and receive multi-channel stimulation of multiple information.

The program proposes that kindergarten architectural space can be transformed into a new form: the combination of teaching aids and toys. Architecture can be a teaching tool for nature lessons. For example, when it rains, rainwater is stored in low-lying areas to form rainwater landscape for children to play in the water, or even plant flowers and fish, to witness the reproduction process of organisms, and to realize the protection of natural resources. The building can also be used as a toy for physical education classes. The inclined facade can be used as a climbing wall, and the whirling ramp can be used as a slide. Various entertainment facilities are flexibly arranged into the logic of spatial organization. The kindergarten building at this time can concentrate children’s various daily activities in its structure and form, allowing them to unknowingly come into contact with biology, physics, and architecture.

Specific Ways

1. Morphology-overlapping tree cover

First, add a path from the side of the road, which passes through the site, and immerses in the depths of the forest, communicating the intimate connection between the road, the site and the forest.

Second, the blending relationship between the site and the forest is implanted in the architectural image, and the building is abstracted as a forest. The virtual trees in the site are distributed in scattered points, which are combined with the physical tree, and spread out a large, nearly circular area with the virtual tree as the center, which is used for the placement of the functional area. The direction of the branches and leaves of the virtual tree stretching in the distance, which forms a number of tree covers overlap. The overlapping parts are relatively sparse and evolve into long, narrow and flexible corridors, connecting functional areas in series, and the whole building begins to take on a meandering shape.

Third, use the shape in the previous step as the roof of the building, and push and pull in the vertical direction of the roof to form a situation where the middle part rises upwards and the edges approach downwards. The building seems to grow out of the ground, minimizing the intervention to the site.

Fourth, take the roof plan as a reference to produce the first and second floors of the building, each with varying degrees of ups and downs. The first floor is divided into two parts with a road passing through it, with small fluctuations and several platforms, which can accommodate most of the functional areas needed by the kindergarten. The second floor uses the sky corridor to connect the entire space, with a large degree of undulation, so that children can move their limbs in all directions during the walk, so as to promote the active development of children at the physiological level.

Fifth, the building produced by the above steps is sufficient to accommodate 75 children. If another 75 children are added in the future, a larger underground space can be expanded downward. A movable ground is formed at the ramp interface between the first and second floors in the southwest and the outer edge of the first floor in the northeast, which is connected with the high point of the ground space to produce two slopes in different directions, so that children can directly slide to the underground space and the slope will become a paradise for them.

2. Blurring the boundary between indoor and outdoor

Nature is the best teacher for children, and taking the natural environment as part of the classroom is a highlight of this kindergarten design. The material variability of the building facade allow people to freely adjust the degree of indoor and outdoor communication according to the weather conditions. The blurring of the boundary redefines the restricted range of children's activities. When the weather is good, the space boundary can be separated by only soft curtains or even completely open, which creates opportunities for children to come into contact with the natural environment and helps them deepen their perception of nature.

3. Functional corridor space

The new kindergarten building will create diversified and interesting children's activity spaces, abandon the concept of classroom, but divide the indoor space into transparent and uninterrupted areas, carrying different functions. The richness of the spatial form will give birth to many interesting types of activities, which is conducive to children's diversified autonomous exploration actions, and stimulates children's curiosity and creativity. The doors and walls in the normal teaching space are replaced with transparent and primitive large holes, which plays the role of proper planning of flow lines and distinguishing functions. Children can freely shuttle through all corners of the kindergarten and carry out daily routines, activities and interpersonal communication. The winding corridor is squeezed out between the activity areas, which is not just a passage, but a module that can carry multiple functions such as reading, socializing, and leisure.