Montpelier Community Nursery
London studio AY Architects has constructed a small wooden nursery in a public garden in Camden. Scroll down to see a pair of cute axonometric drawings (+ slideshow).
The Montpelier Community Nursery provides affordable day care for children between the ages of two and five, so AY Architects had to design a building that would be inexpensive to both build and run.
The architects designed three large skylights to maximise natural lighting, then angled them across the roof to a north and south orientation.
"The building is more or less located on the footprint of the previous nursery building in order to not disturb the existing beautiful garden," architect Yeoryia Manolopoulou told Dezeen. "We then decided to sculpt the roof diagonally so that we could get better daylight.
The building has an all-timber construction, with slender columns both inside and outside. White-washed timber panels were used to build the walls and roof, while the exterior is clad with black-stained larch decking.
Floor-to ceiling windows stretch along the north-west elevation to allow the playroom to open out to an enclosed garden playground. There's also a projecting canopy to permit sheltered outdoor activities.