Bernardo Bader Wraps a Three-Storey Mass-Timber Kindergarten in Banded Larch at the Edge of Wolfurt

Vorarlberg has spent four decades turning timber construction into a regional language, which makes it a hard place to build a wooden kindergarten that says anything new. Bernardo Bader Architekten takes on that challenge with the Children's House Brunnengasse in Wolfurt, a three-storey, 1,650 m² building for up to 80 children aged one and a half to six, organised in six groups. Commissioned by the Marktgemeinde Wolfurt and completed in 2025, it sits on a narrow plot at the edge of the Rickenbach village core, right where the old settlement meets a new neighbourhood planned for around 1,000 residents.

What interests us is how the building handles that seam. It is a square, hip-roofed volume that clearly belongs to the village, yet Bader wanted it to stand on its own rather than blend into its older neighbours. The method is material honesty: a concrete basement and circulation core, mass timber from the ground floor up, roughly 420 m³ of wood in total, and a municipal brief that explicitly asked for locally sourced materials. The result is a kindergarten whose pedagogy and construction tell the same story, and that coherence is rarer than it should be.

A Village House That Refuses to Imitate

Seen next to the balconied house beside it, the Children's House reads as a relative, not a twin. The flat hip roof in dark Eternit shingles echoes the pitched rooftops of Rickenbach, and the deep-set windows give the facade the weight of a solid wall rather than the thinness of a curtain. At three storeys it is taller than many of its neighbours, but the compact square footprint keeps it from feeling institutional.

The real intelligence is in the cladding. Untreated larch boards of varying widths run vertically between the large openings and switch to horizontal bands along the floor slabs, so you can read the structure of the building from the street. Bader's office tested the same principle at its school in Au, and here it does double duty: it links the building to the timber facades of the old village core while making clear that this is a contemporary construction, not a revival. Over time the larch will silver, and the bands will remain legible as a record of how the house was put together.

At the entrance, a modest canopy and concrete planter benches give children somewhere to wait, climb and sit. It is a small move, but it shows that the threshold was designed for small bodies first and for the parents' drop-off routine second.

Classrooms in Bands, Corridors That Act as Rooms

The plan arranges group rooms in parallel bands on either side of a wide central circulation zone, and the decision to treat that corridor as an extension of the classrooms changes everything. Glazed timber partitions with dotted frosting strips let light and sightlines pass between room and hall while giving children a degree of privacy at eye level. Sliding doors open up completely, so a table and rug can migrate from room to corridor as the day requires.

White fir walls and larch floors keep the palette quiet, which is the right call. Kindergartens fill up quickly with color from toys, drawings and clothing; Bader provides a calm background and lets the children supply the noise. The tall wood cabinet walls double as storage and spatial dividers, so the furniture becomes architecture rather than clutter pushed against the walls.

Designing for Retreat as Much as Play

The architects describe the house as a balance of security, curiosity and community, with distinct spaces for movement, creativity and retreat. The deep window seat is the clearest expression of that last category: a thick wall carved into a nook where a child can sit with a tree in view and step out of the group for a moment. Most kindergartens never offer this kind of space, and it costs very little beyond a generous wall section.

The cloakroom shows the same thinking applied to daily routine. Built-in benches, cubbies and hooks sit beside a glazed wall that opens onto a nap room lined with mattresses, so the transition from arriving to resting happens in a sequence the children can see and understand. Transparency here is about orientation, not display.

Daily Rituals in Wood and Clay

The dining room, fully lined in timber with tall windows toward the hillside, gives lunch the dignity of a proper room rather than a converted classroom. The washroom is narrow and practical, with a row of low basins and a curtain for privacy, scaled so a toddler can manage alone. Neither space aims for spectacle; both succeed because the dimensions are right.

On the ground floor, the concrete slab is coated in dark clay-casein, a natural finish that contrasts with the pale wood above and grounds the building visually. The stairwell, set within the solid core, is where the hybrid structure becomes visible: plank-clad walls, diagonal handrails and a round light glowing against the wood turn a fire-safety requirement into a vertical space children will remember climbing.

Plans and Drawings

The ground floor plan confirms the logic you feel inside: a square volume, a stair and core at the centre, group rooms in bands, and a central corridor generous enough to hold cubbies, rugs and play. The corridor photograph shows the payoff, with built-in shelving along one side and a window at the end framing the tiled roofs of the neighbours, so even the circulation keeps the village in view. Trees around the perimeter and a garden that connects directly to the historic neighbourhood extend the building's reach beyond its narrow plot.

Why This Project Matters

Kindergartens are often designed as cheerful boxes with color applied to the outside. Bader's approach goes the other way: the building gets its character from how it is made, from local larch, fir and clay, and from a cladding system that makes the structure readable. Pedagogy is built into the section and the plan, in the corridor that becomes a room, the window seat that becomes a refuge and the glazed partitions that let children understand where they are.

It also offers a useful model for growing villages. As Wolfurt adds a new neighbourhood next to its old core, this building shows that new civic architecture can draw on regional craft without falling into nostalgia, and that a municipality's insistence on local materials can shape a better building instead of just a greener specification. For anyone designing schools in small towns, that is the lesson worth taking away.

Children's House Brunnengasse by Bernardo Bader Architekten, Wolfurt, Austria. Area: 1,650 m². Completed: 2025. Photography: Ralph Feiner.

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