hakusui nursery school in chiba city, japan, is built on a gentle sloping hill adjacent to a small wooded area. designed by yamazaki kentaro design workshop, the japanese practice wanted the children to be exposed to as much of the surrounding nature as possible. by establishing the orientation, wind and topography of the site, the kindergarden has a capacity of 60 people and features a gradual stepped interior with a sloping roof supported by timber columns of varying inclinations. composed mainly of light timber, the building faces south, giving the child-friendly space a comfortable atmosphere and plenty of natural sunlight. the stepped nature of the interior allows the floor plan to be divided into different play zones whilst small pods painted in the primary colors provides a private space for learning activities. the glazing on either side and the large glass opening at the top allows natural ventilation to travel through the space, providing the nursery a pleasant breeze, especially in the summer months.
a mechanism built on the roof operates an automatic watering system where the rainwater that has been accumulated follows the sloped gradient of the roof, creating a waterfall at the edge and collected in the jabujabu pond underneath. proving popular with the children, the outdoor area with the natural ponds and the timber decking encourages open-air playing and interaction whilst surrounded by natural scenery.
The Hakusui Nursery School in Sakura, Chiba was wanted to suit 60 students. Seiyu-Kai, a nearby social welfare firm spend significant time in elderly care offices approached us for this project. The general idea for this arrangement began with a thought: “a nursery school is a huge house. Encompassed by mountains and timberland, the southern zone of the site lays on a delicate incline. Putting this geography to utilize, we designed the school space to look like a substantial arrangement of stairs. One novel highlight of this “huge house,” for instance, is that a 3-year old kid is in the same room as a 5-year old and these offspring of diverse ages can collaborate in the wide, one-room space. Moreover, ought to a 3 year-old kid be dozing while a 5 year old tyke plays adjacent, these distinctions in beat fortify the “local” characteristics of this “expansive house.”
The Hakusui Nursery School Embrace The Idea of Nursery School is a Large House
The Hakusui Nursery School project is keeping in accordance with Seiyu-kai’s longstanding (26-year) theory, the designer made it a need to minimize the quantity of blind sides inside the room so as to keep wellbeing measures as unintrusive as could be expected under the circumstances. Using vast sliding window outlines along the northern and southern appearances, alongside the space made by the incline, ventilation is made as a breeze attracts from the south of the structure, goes through the woodland like interior columns advancing upwards before at long last smothering over the porch on the northern side.
The Hakusui Nursery School Embrace - The Idea of Nursery School is a Large House
A little lake on the southern end which assembles water and additionally water from sprinklers introduced on the southward-inclined rooftop likewise adds to the wind stream as the water is retained into the wind that blows into the structure. This was a piece of an extensive arrangement to make a space that was conjoined from the environment that encompasses the Hakusui Nursery School. They accept that in seeking after the first idea of a “nursery school as an extensive house” they attained to something similar to the houses in cultivating groups that encompass it. The objective was to make a space that was a good time for the kids as well as through mixing into the nature around it, cultivate an experience that was more noteworthy than the total of its components.