The children’s centre environment

Context

A sense of place and belonging within a precinct helps children with their own sense of identity. A children’s centre, especially one with additional integrated services, is an important focus for the community and the community needs to ‘own’ it and identify with it, for it to be truly successful. The most successful centres I visited don’t just ‘fit in’. They create a dialogue with the existing local fabric and precinct character, drawing out and expressing some aspects and contrasting with others. Texture, colour and materials highlight the contrast between old and new, inside and out, public and private. Site relationships are reinforced by highlighting existing views, sightlines and pedestrian access and maintaining a scale and form that is in keeping with the precinct.

At each of the centres in Vaduz, Machida (pictured on p. 30), New Canaan and Villetta the building form is responsive to the natural landscape, echoing site contours, being low and discreet against the horizon, using natural materials and feathered edges (i.e. the outside perimeter of the building steps in and out to meet the landscape in either elevation or plan). The landscaping dominates, with large expanses of green and the use of planting for screening. In all cases this contextual responsiveness is contrasted by the unusual built form of the structure, whether it is a curved concrete roof, oversized roof lanterns or a highly orthogonal and structured fenestration.

Other centres, such as the Cowgate Under 5’s Centre in Edinburgh, the Loris Malaguzzi centre in Reggio Emilia and Apple Seeds in New York City, are responsive to their local culture. Reflecting the local architectural language and scale, they embrace and reflect the community context but their interiors, glimpsed from without, are in complete contrast.

Lanterns Nursery School and Children’s Centre in Winchester (p. 30, image 3) responds to both landscape and culture. Designed to be in keeping with the local Hampshire farmhouses, the roof pitch of 48 degrees is a direct mirror of the roof forms of the houses opposite. The Marmoutier Preschool in Alsace (p. 31, image 5) is built as a discreet extension of the 10th century abbey garden walls, low, dark and copper clad. Internally, it unfolds into a contrasting burst of colour and light. Each of these centres is clearly identified as being an integral part of that community’s culture while still asserting their own identity.

External entry building, Tom Tits Experiment Daycare Centre, Södertälje, Sweden

Another important aspect of contextual design is the threshold between the centre and its surroundings. The entrance is a celebrated junction. It can be full of enticement through subtle transition—such as the long garden wall of Lanterns—or surprising, like the sudden revelation of the inner oval through the low keyhole entry at the Fuji Centre. At the Cowgate Centre, the juxtaposition of wide, hidden terraces and the narrow close that leads to it adds interest.

Contrast of the unusual can draw attention to a centre, while the built form, its scale and materials still conform to the local precinct’s character. The Tom Tits centre in Stockholm is housed in an existing old warehouse typical of the area, but it is overlaid with the weird and wonderful; a bicycle contraption within a wheel and an over-scaled air balloon act as a beacon. The Fawood centre in London—a simple rectangular grey shed against a backdrop of oppressive grey 1960s housing commission buildings—conforms with its precinct in alignment, scale, form and even materials, but it is covered with bouquets of coloured plastic petals, translucent yet beautifully colourful and very cheering to a primarily migrant clientele caught in a grey London climate.

Exteriors

1 Ebenholz Centre, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

2 Machida Shizen Preschool & Nursery, Tokyo, Japan

3 Lanterns Nursery School & Children’s Centre, Winchester, UK

4 Cowgate Under 5’s Centre, Edinburgh, UK

5 Marmoutier Preschool, Alsace, France

6 The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA

7 Paulo Freire Preschool, Reggio Emilia, Italy

8 Maibara Cho Preschool, Shiga, Japan

9 Fuji Kindergarten, Tokyo, Japan

10 Waldorf Steiner Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland

11 Fawood Children’s Centre, London, UK

12 Loris Malaguzzi International Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy

13 Kintori Way Children’s Centre, London, UK

14 Apple Seeds, New York City, USA

Community, inclusion and the spaces in between

Creating architectural relationships between spaces fosters people’s relationships with each other. Education is a social activity and a children’s centre must facilitate this sociability, at both a micro level—child to child—and at a macro level, from community to community. To be a place of connections, many centres provide a central communal space that can be utilised by all and provides transparency between its various components. This can be external such as the Fuji Kindergarten, Tokyo, central oval (pictured overleaf, images 6 and 7) or internal. In Finland, several schools are combined on one campus but there is a central and transparent communal space that is often a dining area, gallery or library. At The Children’s School, New Canaan, a preschool of 110 pupils, a fluid open plan of staggered play areas without barriers achieves a similar unity through its openness.

At a more micro level, relationships are made in the spaces in between, such as the transition zone of the undercover external wings of bubbletecture at Maibara Cho Preschool, Shiga (image 10), or the verandah at Lanterns, Winchester (image 11). These spaces are neither fully open and exposed, nor closed away and offer a perfect neutral territory for overlapped and mingled play. These transitory spaces are made more special and highlighted by a sensory use of material, a change in light quality and colour, or the provision of a few props such as benches or blocks, etc. to encourage children to linger longer.

At Kindergarten Nussackerweg, Ludwigsburg (image 8), an in-between space is created and given definition by its geometrical form. The cylinder within a box expresses a microcosm within and a sense of a context beyond; while windows and openings let the children consciously play between the two. At Paulo Freire Preschool in Reggio Emilia (image 14), a circular court sweeps around and off to the side of dense landscaping, extending the entry path into a small court with seating. The geometry alone implies the containment and creates a place to commune.

The Fawood Centre, London (image 9) provides a clear realisation of democratic use of space. It is basically a winter garden enclosed within a large steel mesh shed; the various facilities are arranged in smaller enclosures within the shed. Some are high, and others are low, such as the soft yurt tent structure which is used as a home base on the ground floor. All the facilities are informally gathered within the large communal play space and accessed by an open structure of stairs, bridges and decks, which afford the user a view of the totality and encourage encounter.

At Ashmole Preschool and Primary School in London, a simple entry alcove is created by a covered way and some masonry partitions with viewing windows and seats along the main circulation route, painted a special colour to highlight the area’s uniqueness.

SHARED SPACES

1 Klisterburken Nursery School, Stockholm, Sweden

2 Hosmarinpuisto School & Daycare, Espoo, Finland

3 Dining room, I Ur Och Skur Primary School, Stockholm, Sweden

4 Paulo Freire Preschool, Reggio Emilia, Italy, photograph courtesy of Tiziano Teneggi Architect, Reggio Emilia

5 Ruusutorppa central space, Espoo, Finland

6 Manager’s desk overlooking oval, Fuji Kindergarten, Tokyo, Japan

7 Rooftop, Fuji Kindergarten, Tokyo, Japan

8 Kindergarten Nussackerweg, Ludwigsburg, Germany

9 Open circulation, Fawood Children’s Centre, London, UK

10 Transition space, Maibara Cho Preschool, Shiga, Japan

11 Lanterns Nursery School & Children’s Centre, Winchester, UK

12 Several entry points, Soinisen Koulu Primary School, Helsinki, Finland

13 Ashmole Preschool & Primary School, London, UK

14 Entry area, Paulo Freire Preschool, Reggio Emilia, Italy

Space

Space is not just about storage. Children’s centres require space to sleep, to eat, to work and to move. Multipurpose space is important, but so is public and private space, and activity-specific space such as laboratories, libraries, art rooms, children’s kitchens, etc. There is a direct correlation between the stress levels of children and staff and the amount of space available to them within a centre. Spaces that are too large and multi-purpose can lead to noise and confusion, however spaces that are too small can create heightened levels of stress and anxiety. In the article, How big is too big? How small is too small?, Gary Moore proposes 42 to 50 square feet per child as the ideal. He suggests providing a generous amount of space subdivided into ‘resource rich pockets’, stating:

We have also known from as early as the mid 1960s (from environment behavior studies by Hutt and Vaizey) that too little space and too high a density of children (less than 35 square feet of useable activity space per child) not only leads to a feeling of being in a closet, but more fundamentally is associated with more aggressive/destructive behavior, less constructive interaction, and less quiet, solitary play. (Moore 1996, p. 21)

The discipline of architecture is all about how we manage space as well as acoustics, colour, light, scale and access to the natural environment, to create environments that are stimulating, protective, comfortable and beautiful. And a sense of great space can be achieved architecturally, with soaring lofty ceilings contrasted against smaller structures, by flooding open voids with natural light and by drawing the eye up, out and beyond, into ‘borrowed’ space beyond windows or openings.

Current neuroscientific thinking (outlined on p. 20) requires that our educational interiors emulate outdoor qualities if they are to be effective areas for learning. So perhaps the ideal is an ever-present sense of not just our immediate surroundings but also the larger context around us, of the universe above continually contrasted against our small cave below.

SPACE

1 Maibara Cho, Preschool, Shiga, Japan

2 Fawood Children’s Centre, London, UK

3 Giulia Maramotti Infant–Toddler Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy, photograph courtesy Lapis Architetture Studio Associato, Reggio Emilia

4 Loris Malaguzzi International Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy, photograph courtesy Tullio Zini Architect Studio and ZPZ PARTNERS, Modena

5 Hosmarinpuisto School & Daycare, Espoo, Finland

6 The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA

7 Loris Malaguzzi International Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy, photograph courtesy Tullio Zini Architect Studio and ZPZ PARTNERS, Modena

Transparency and nature

Spatial extension, views out and beyond, and a visual sense of the collective, create a sense of inclusiveness rather than enclosure. To be able to see the sky and have a visual connection with the natural environment outside is fundamental to us all for both a sense of calmness and normalcy. Children in particular—not yet trained to ignore their instincts—yearn for that outside connection.

At Tom Tits Experiment Preschool in Sweden (image 1), the corridor is not enclosed by walls but by open framed storage screens. It is transformed into a learning street that merges and takes on the character of each room that it passes, becoming an extension of the art room, of the wet area or of the main dining room.

In the Machida Shizen Preschool, Tokyo (image 2), a low child-scaled locker area and play loft is transformed into an open and light filled oasis by the translucent coloured Perspex used in place of walls.

The Children’s School, New Canaan, extends the feeling of space inside by ‘borrowing’ the space and scenery of the beautiful woods outside with high glazed clerestories, skylights and glazed curtain walls. The centre is flooded with indirect ambient natural lighting (image 1).

In Hounslow, London, the harsh urban context is filtered by the multicoloured façade screen while still letting in lovely natural light and glimpses of sky (image 2).

At the Cowgate Under 5’s Centre, in Edinburgh (image 3), the extra-wide corridor acts as a multipurpose transition space between the outdoors and the interior. On one side it is flooded with light from full, floor to ceiling glazing and on the other side the solid masonry wall is an open-weave membrane of ad-hoc framed openings to the playrooms behind.

1 The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA

2 Fawood Children’s Centre, London, UK

3 Cowgate Under 5’s Centre, Edinburgh, UK

1 Rodari Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy

2 Kintori Way Children’s Centre, London, UK

3 Ashmole Preschool & Primary School, London, UK

4 Giulia Maramotti Infant–Toddler Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy

5 Ruusutorppa central space, Espoo, Finland

6 Kindergarten Nussackerweg, Ludwigsburg, Germany

7 Kindergarten Friedrich-EbertStrasse, Heilbronn, Germany

8 Hosmarinpuisto School & Daycare, Espoo, Finland

Ashmole Preschool and Primary School in London uses a bay window that pushes out into the landscape as a ‘waving window’, to allow the children to see the comings and goings of parents (image 3).

In Kintori Way Children’s Centre, low openings cut into fences or partitions let children see through to the other side (image 2).

At the Reggio Emilia Rodari Centre (image 1), they have extended glazed ‘winter gardens’ from the playrooms out into the garden. These outdoors–in rooms have paved floors and internal planting, and borrow the external scenery while providing respite from the weather. This concept is further explored in the Maramotti Centre (image 4), where open steel pergola structures attached to the playrooms can be wheeled along paved paths out to the end of the garden, extending the playroom’s territory to its furthest limits.

Circulation bridges in centres in Finland and Germany link through the voids above communal spaces, allowing the movements within the community to be seen while also providing an overview of the whole space (images 5 and 6).

In Heilbronn, the cubic volume of the centre is cut into by open cubic voids of the decks that abut each playroom, giving a sense that the outside is physically cutting into the built form (image 7).

In Hosmarinpuisto School and Daycare, Finland, it is possible to see from one level through to the next and beyond through a layer of open screens (image 8).

1 Giulia Maramotti Infant–Toddler Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy, photograph courtesy Lapis Architetture Studio Associato, Reggio Emilia

2 Soinisen Koulu Primary School, Helsinki, Finland

On a subtler level, at the Maramotti Centre in Reggio Emilia, semi-opaque skylights are scattered across the high ceiling in a linear path that follows the movement of the sun from sunrise to sunset to encompass its light within the main hall (image 1).

At Soinisen Koulu Primary School, Finland a lightweight glazed roof that lets sky and air seep in through wide gaps underneath screens the internal courtyard (image 2).

The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA, with its borrowed space and scenery of the woods outside flooding in.

The great outdoors

There is a fine line between leaving the environment as natural as possible and yet designing it to provide tools for the many different ways that children play. Below are some examples of the ways in which children play, and some of the tools and spaces these different playing styles might require: Social play: public and private areas and circulation links, interaction games area, somewhere just to run.

Imaginative play: scenarios, props and a flexible environment that can be customised.

Constructive play: sandpits, blocks and twigs, loose soils and pebbles.

Experimental play: water and sand sculptures.

Exploration: paths, bridges, woods, small slopes to roll on, wild and ‘secret’ places.

Sensory experience: variety of planting that stimulates the senses, mobiles and wind vanes.

Challenging play: involving physical and mental challenges, complex climbing, paths through hedges and tunnels through hills.

Learning skills: vegetable gardens, flower beds and animal care.

Left to her own devices, nature provides tall trees, big open spaces and a variety of materials that can be used in play. But often the site has been swept clean before building, so these dramatic elements are lost and have to be reinstated over time. The most successful outdoor play areas manage to recreate the drama of nature and supplement it with child-scaled components.

1 Kinderhaus Violetta, Ludwigsburg, Germany

2 Kindergarten Friedrich-EbertStrasse, Heilbronn, Germany

3 Ebenholz Centre, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

4 The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA

1 Fuji Kindergarten, Tokyo, Japan

2 Kindergarten Friedrich-EbertStrasse, Heilbronn, Germany

3 Fuji Kindergarten, Tokyo, Japan

4 Kintori Way Children’s Centre, London, UK

5 Maibara Cho Preschool, Shiga, Japan

To allow for interactive, industrious play and to teach environmentalism, life cycles, recycling, making things from scratch, enjoying nature, observing nature and being a caretaker requires a landscape full of enrichment. Pets such as a rabbit, a donkey or chickens are a popular way of exposing children to the cycles of life and encouraging nurturing.

A greenhouse and tool shed have pride of place in the centre of Edinburgh’s Cowgate Under 5’s Centre. Tokyo’s Fuji Kindergarten features a super-long slide in among the trees. Reggio Emilia schools are famous for their water play and wind sculptures (image 2), while building blocks are scattered outdoors in permanent box/bench units at the Ebenholz Centre, Vaduz (image 4).

Detail, texture, colour and ceilings

Attention to detail and cultural relevance in the following areas provides for playfulness, invention and enrichment.

Colour: can delineate areas and activities, and attract children, whether the aim is to create calming environments or bright focal areas.

Lighting: should aim to emulate the variability and flexibility of nature, from soft, subdued and shadowy to bright task areas. Lights are also eye-catching elements: children love them as a sparkly feature.

Texture and pattern: can help to provide spatial differentiation (such as variety of floor finishes), tactile entertainment, as well as acting as a learning tool.

Smell: such as the beautiful smell of cooking, garden flowers on the breeze, wood joinery. Avoid chemical paints and plastics.

Sound: Providing sound absorption materials and sound insulation to delineate quiet areas can make a significant improvement to the ambient quality of a centre. Musical features, if used judiciously, can provide hours of amusement such as the musical ‘soft metal’ stairs at the Maramotti Centre in Reggio Emilia (see p. 65).

A dynamic and interesting ceiling plane: Because of their small stature and many ways of moving other than just walking, children are constantly looking up, so the features of the voids above take on particular significance.

1 Ebenholz Centre, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

2–3 Machida Shizen Preschool & Nursery, Tokyo, Japan

4 William Bellamy Children’s Centre, London, UK

5–6 Mouse hole at Lanterns Nursery School & Children’s Centre, Winchester, UK

7 Lanterns Nursery School & Children’s Centre, Winchester, UK

8 Kindergarten Friedrich-EbertStrasse, Heilbronn, Germany

9 Loris Malaguzzi International Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy

10 Façade cladding, Lloyd Park Centre, Walthamstow, UK

11 I Ur Och Skur Preschool, Lidingö, Sweden

12 Buckle My Shoe Nursery School, New York City, USA

13 Marmoutier Preschool, Alsace, France

Ceilings

1 Arkki Daycare Centre, Helsinki, Finland

2 Buckle My Shoe Nursery School, New York City, USA

3 Lloyd Park Centre, Walthamstow, UK

4 The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA

5 William Bellamy Children’s Centre, London, UK

6 Maibara Cho Preschool, Shiga, Japan

7 Loris Malaguzzi International Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy, photograph courtesy Tullio Zini Architect Studio and ZPZ

PARTNERS, Modena

8 Cowgate Under 5’s Centre, Edinburgh, UK

Loris Malaguzzi International Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy, photograph courtesy Tullio Zini Architect Studio and ZPZ PARTNERS, Modena

1 John Perry Children’s Centre, London, UK

2 Lanterns Nursery School & Children’s Centre, Winchester, UK

3 Klisterburken Nursery School, Stockholm, Sweden

4 Loris Malaguzzi International Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy

5 The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA

6 Klisterburken Nursery School, Stockholm, Sweden

7 Buckle My Shoe Nursery School, New York City, USA

Scale

Children are small—it is their most obvious difference to adults. It is how we identify them and how they identify themselves. Their smallness can make them vulnerable and insecure, so they are naturally drawn to small cubbies and small-scaled areas where they can feel competent to cope with new challenges. Providing small microcosms within the whole gives children a sense of safety, control and belonging.

Small-scale furniture and equipment, cubbies and hidey holes, low-level small windows that only children can use, breaking up a larger volume into smaller components and contrasting the big picture against the small all help children to come to terms with the world around them.

In Japan, many of the centres have built small child-scaled spaces into the architecture to great effect, while in Italy they have relied on freestanding furniture installations with a dual role as cubbyhouse to provide the microscale. The most famous of these is the padded triangle, open at both ends (image 4). Every centre I visited had something, from the internal tree-house of Buckle My Shoe (image 7) to the mouse hole cut into the skirting in Winchester (see images 5 and 6 on p. 55).

1 Maibara Cho Preschool, Shiga, Japan

2 Fawood Children’s Centre, London, UK

3 Cowgate Under 5’s Centre, Edinburgh

4–5 Lanterns Nursery School & Children’s Centre, Winchester, UK

1 Kindergarten Nussackerweg, Ludwigsburg, Germany

2 Ebenholz Centre, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

3 Kindergarten Nussackerweg, Ludwigsburg, Germany

4 Paulo Freire Preschool, Reggio Emilia, Italy

5 Ashmole Preschool & Primary School, London, UK

6 Tom Tits Experiment Daycare Centre, Södertälje, Sweden

Interaction

Children love a challenge. They do not move in straight lines from A to B as adults do, they like obstacle courses and hide-and-seek, mazes, secret ways and myriad options. Children do not just walk, they hop, skip, shimmy along on their bottoms, run, jump and meander, sometimes backwards. Any prop that can be used to extend the scope of movement is seized upon; a wall for balancing, a slippery surface, a secret tunnel or a tiny door.

In Reggio Emilia, the teachers stated that they did not see the built environment as an object but as a subject, because it interacts with the children, whether it encloses them or it challenges them. Many of the centres I visited used components that compelled more challenging ways of moving to engage both children and adults.

At Fuji Kindergarten in Tokyo (image 8) slippery slides and rope ladders provide access from the roof play area to the central outside play space. The Kindergarten Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse in Heilbronn (images 1–6) has climbing frames linking the cube-like playrooms on the ground and first floors, while a floodlit rear corridor provides adult access.

At the Maramotti Centre, Reggio Emilia, the playroom stairs are designed to be musical instruments (image 9). Soft metal makes a pinging sound, which changes if you run, walk or roll over it. Initially parents were very concerned about children hurting themselves on the stairs, but the teachers met with them and persevered. Within a month, the parents could see that the stairs had improved their children’s motor skills, and no one was hurt.

1–2 Stairs to the sky at The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA

3 Ramps and curved roofscape at Ebenholz Centre, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

4 Amphitheatre steps, ladders and lofts at Arkki Daycare Centre, Helsinki, Finland

5 Central ramped circulation at Ebenholz Centre, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

6 Stepped floor plane at Loris Malaguzzi

International Centre, Reggio Emilia, Italy, photograph courtesy Tullio Zini Architect Studio and ZPZ PARTNERS, Modena

Furniture

Furniture is supposed to fill a practical need: a chair the right size to sit on, a table for doing craftwork, a storage unit for toys. But often in children’s centres, the rooms can become repositories, with so much oversized, under-utilised and incompatible bits and pieces that the room’s usability is much reduced. So when discussing furniture’s compatibility with the architecture it inhabits, I am not just referring to style and colour (although these are important), I am referring to fully coordinated design: where the furniture has been thoughtfully considered to complement the space or the space has been designed with the furniture in mind, in terms of use and style.

Bedding is a particularly difficult area. Often the temporary bed mats necessary to maximise the use of a space are so small and low that they look like refugee encampments within the architectural voids, while cot rooms are notorious for being undersized and unable to fit the desired number of cots.

Some solutions include the creative bed nests of the Pen Green Centre for Children and their Families in Northamptonshire, England (see www.pengreen.org), or building the beds into the design such as the wall cots in the Arkki Centre, or the concealed wall beds at Hosmarinpuisto School and Daycare, both in Finland (see p. 80).

1 Mobile Bus Outreach, Hampshire, UK

2 Maibara Cho Preschool, Shiga, Japan

3 Klisterburken Nursery School, Stockholm, Sweden

4 Kindergarten Friedrich-EbertStrasse, Heilbronn, Germany

5 Arkki Daycare Centre, Helsinki, Finland

6–7 Fuji Kindergarten, Tokyo, Japan

8 Maibara Cho Preschool, Shiga, Japan

9 Buckle My Shoe Nursery School, New York City, USA

Art rooms

The font of self-expression and developing fine motor skills, the art room is a key component of any self-respecting children’s centre. It is a practical wet/ messy activity area, a place of inspiration and often an Aladdin’s cave of resource materials.

1 Tom Tits Experiment Daycare Centre, Södertälje, Sweden

2 Maibara Cho Preschool, Shiga, Japan

3 Klisterburken Nursery School, Stockholm, Sweden

4 Buckle My Shoe Nursery School, New York City, USA

5 Klisterburken Nursery School, Stockholm, Sweden

6 Arkki Daycare Centre, Helsinki, Finland

Bathrooms

Often under-celebrated in design, the children’s centre bathroom is a necessary service. But it is also the place where children learn not just toilet training, but that their bodily functions are normal and that cleanliness is important. Much time in a children’s centre is spent in the bathroom and it is very much a social educational activity, so the design is as important here as it is elsewhere.

Eat-in kitchens

Cooking is one of the fundamental activities of life and is an integral element of any home-like environment. Providing a kitchen that is accessible and useable by the children not only allows the development of important life skills (such as understanding healthy eating) but it also provides a warmth and sense of home and hearth to a centre.

Many of the centres I visited had both an eat-in kitchen and a separate, more commercially viable one (usually required by that country’s building codes). But many others survived very well with just the eat-in kitchen, involving the children in the daily task of preparing sandwiches and salads and simple cooking for lunch.

1 Tom Tits Experiment Daycare Centre, Södertälje, Sweden

2 Mobil Pedagogik, Huddinge, Sweden

3 John Perry Children’s Centre, London, UK

4 Kinderhaus Violetta, Ludwigsburg, Germany

5 Kindergarten Nussackerweg, Ludwigsburg, Germany

Storage

Good storage solutions are critical to the smooth running of every centre. The first thing that any teacher or centre manager asks of an architect is ‘more storage, please’. Toys, art materials, artwork, paperwork, play equipment, sleeping gear, clothing and personal items, nappies and associated products, strollers, shoes and wet weather gear and still more toys all need a home, otherwise a children’s centre can end up looking like a disaster zone in which no one can breathe, let alone think calmly and creatively.

Easy access for adults and for children is a key issue. The storage tends to be front and centre rather than hidden away in a back room. To be successful, it needs to be incorporated as part of the overall design.

DISCREET IN-WALL STORAGE

1–2 Beds hidden in the wall in Hosmarinpuisto School & Daycare, Espoo, Finland

FREE-STANDING STORAGE

3 Low cupboard units in Ruusutorppa Montessori Preschool, Espoo, Finland

4 Cubby clothes lockers of The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA

DISCREET IN-WALL STORAGE

1 Lockers become part of the wall design at William Bellamy Children’s Centre, London, UK

2 Art materials, toys and learning tools orderly stashed away in the white walls of The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA

STROLLER STORAGE

3 External stroller shed at William Bellamy Children’s Centre, London, UK

5 Strollers on rolling track at Apple Seeds, New York City, USA

FEATURED STORAGE

4 Child documentation folders and drawers in an important-looking cabinet in the centre of the playroom at Kindergarten Nussackerweg, Ludwigsburg, Germany

6 Personal belongings in little sacks artfully scattered across a wall, where the children can reach, Tom Tits Experiment Daycare Centre, Södertälje, Sweden

How furniture and storage can go wrong!

Offices

An interdisciplinary approach to early learning is best served by a communal office space, often arranged around a central table to encourage communication.

In centres today, high levels of documentation are required, for quality assurance, health requirements, occupational safety, legal requirements plus the documentation of the actual program. Evidence-based research and the Reggio concept of documenting the child’s creative process have further added to the paper trail; there is lots of computer work, photocopying, compiling reports and presenting information. So a full office setup is required, often as a rear wing to the centre.

Offices are generally separate from the child-accessible area, but staff still need to be able to supervise the children.

1 The Children’s School, New Canaan, NY, USA. Perhaps controversially, the open plan office is hidden behind one-way obscured glass so that the children can be supervised and observed discreetly.

2 Hosmarinpuisto School & Daycare, Espoo, Finland. More like a dining room than an office in feel.

3 Lanterns Nursery School & Children’s Centre, Winchester, UK. This office acts as a rear spine to the main playrooms and is a hive of activity.

Outreach

Health, nutrition, emotional, social and cognitive development are not separate issues in the infant brain. All need to be addressed in Early Learning and Family Centre models. (NIFTeY 2009, p. 1)

In the past, outreach services have targeted only those who clearly seem to need them. This is logical and is still a necessary part of an overall outreach program. But services have adopted a more holistic approach in recent years. Anne Cairn, manager of the Victoria Park Centre for children at risk in Edinburgh, Scotland, explained:

I’ve been doing this for a long time, in the old days we used to get the children only, wash them, clothe them, feed them, play with them, then send them home and do it all over again the next day. Nothing ever changed. Now we focus on the parent first, develop a relationship with them and form a contract, the message being that you can have what you want but you have to give something too. Of course we ultimately have more power in the relationship than they do, but they do have some scope. It is much more successful.

The Victoria Park centre is set up with playrooms, plus services and additional outreach rooms, interview rooms and most importantly a parent community room which seems very welcoming and quite the focus of the centre.

An even more holistic approach is the idea of ‘universal services’, which provide families with the support they need before they become ‘at risk’.

Universal services are aimed at the general population and are accessible to all. In London, the William Bellamy Centre (a government-run centre) provides long day care, preschool, before-school care and vacation care. These are all catered for separately in different parts of the building. It also places a great emphasis on its additional community services which include co-located health services, antenatal midwives, teenage pregnancy midwives, pre-infant mental health therapists (working with attachment theory), speech and language therapists, play language workshops, playing communication workshops for kids, parenting programs, jobs in training focus, job broker, benefits advice and outreach for travellers.

Because they are not targeted at anyone in particular, universal services can avoid stigmatisation, and this means that people are more likely to use them. But it is important to maintain the child-centred focus of universal service centres—if the additional services dominate, there is a danger of creating an ‘institutional’ feel to the buildings where it then becomes necessary to overcome parents’ perceptions that the children’s centre is linked to social services and will take their children or their benefits away.

In Tasmania, Australia, in 2009, the Department of Education commissioned a design brief for 30 new integrated family and children’s centres. While local communities will participate in a high degree of consultation over the design of each centre, the working party for the brief was made up of representatives from the various health, education and outreach groups, as well as architects (I was part of the working party). In this brief, there is a strong focus on the centres being welcoming and user-friendly family places, designed specifically for children and run by the community for the community. The brief specifies that the built form reflect these qualities; there are no suites of offices or segregated facilities, rather, communal shared spaces are front and central with tangible links between the various disciplines and scope for customisation and flexibility built into the design to meet the changing needs of each locality. The bulk of the brief is taken up with describing ways of achieving child-friendly design.

Meanwhile, in Hampshire, England, the County Council has built 16 identical prefabricated family and children’s centres in the last five years (see pp. 118–119). Each one is sited carefully with a unique setout of landscaping, access and outdoor play area. One centre has a large yard with a custom-built timber play ship; another has no yard at all. These centres are about providing outreach facilities within areas of need rather than expecting those in need to seek help out. The maximum number of children catered for is about 10, depending on the outdoor facilities provided. These centres are designed to draw the parents in. The managers love the multipurpose rooms, cosy sitting rooms and the kitchen feel of the foyers. The fit-out feels luxurious, with nice materials and fashionable contemporary detailing. From a child’s point of view, the best thing is the range of wall toys from the popular Rosco play equipment catalogue, and the window alcoves. The compactness allows the centres to slot in almost anywhere and be non-threatening and discreet, while the open reception and sitting rooms are definitely meant to encourage adult encounter while the children play safely in the back.

Also in Hampshire, a modified bus is being trialled as a form of more targeted outreach that can go to those deprived areas where the parents need help, but are suspicious of government services and unlikely to utilise them. The idea is to send the education and resources to them in small, non-threatening sorties. This is an expedient way to get educational services to the difficult to reach, but it requires patient and dedicated staff to go where they are not welcome and try to build relationships.

The bus provides a small contained safe zone for a maximum of 5 children to play in one area while around 5 adults can have a meeting in the other. This is an exercise in dressing up an unwelcome concept in appealing packaging, so the bus has been styled to look fresh, luxurious, contemporary and fun. For children, it has window alcoves and the novelty factor, plus colourful, interesting nooks.

Sustainability

Sustainability in building is a huge topic with many books devoted entirely to its development. Likewise, teaching environmental consciousness at the preschool level has been extensively documented (see www.eceen.org.au). It would be interesting to explore the expression of green building practice in forms that are also legible to children, and how environmental sustainability can be incorporated in buildings in a way that has a positive impact on the children.

Many of the centres I visited were built along green principles and had environmental education as part of their program in some form or other, but the interface of the two was much more difficult to uncover.

At Fuji Kindergarten, Japan, the children use pumps to get drinking water, a novelty that also leads to an understanding of its source. At the Children’s School, New Canaan, there is a visible water tank that captures water from the roof. The children fill their water cans from this tank to water the garden. At many of the schools, the program was focused around recycling and growing a vegetable patch, but the most tangible expression of environmentalism was the materials used in the centre’s construction, whether recycled, renewable or just ‘natural’.

Regulations

The benefits of good design are measurable. Research from the UK and abroad has demonstrated the link between quality design and the delivery of high quality services. This link is particularly clear in the field of education. (CABE 2007, p. 3)

Part of the initial brief that I set myself for the Churchill trip was to look at the impact of regulations on the success of the built product. This proved to be a difficult thing to pin down; however, across the 50 or so centres that I saw in the two-month period of my travels, some themes did emerge:

Impact of regulations

The more detailed and exacting the regulation, the more it seemed to interfere with a natural response to site and community. In Japan, for instance, only flat area is included in the play area calculations. This has forced the construction of flat playing areas, which are not necessarily an improvement on the natural topography. In many countries, a playroom is required for each age group. This forces an age regiment on a centre and can put emphasis on segregation. Using detailed guidelines combined with minimal code requirements can enable greater flexibility and creativity in design.

Space requirements per child

Space had the biggest impact on the quality of the centre. Centres with too little space were much more stressful, being cramped and overcrowded with equipment, toys and people, and thus difficult to operate. The centres that did have space stood out as beacons of calmness.

It is not enough to have space recommendations only, as economics will nearly always win and reduce the amount of space per child to a minimum. This is one thing that does need to be code-required. But, how it is applied can be varied. In Britain and Australia, the calculation is based on the play areas only. Thus in Australia it is 3.25 m² per child internally, not including fixed furniture and door swings, and 7 m² externally. In Britain they use the same system, only it is 2.3 m² internally and 9 m² externally. This system often results in ‘surplus’ furnishings and spaces being eliminated so that the maximum number of children for profit can be achieved, resulting in a very poor environment.

In Japan, while the area requirements are tight, they have a dual measuring system. A preschool playroom must be a minimum of 53 m² and should have a maximum of 35 children; thus, 1.5 m² per child is the basic rule. But there is also an overall sliding scale depending on the number of classes and students in a centre, which is applied to both the internal and external areas. This works out to approximately 5–6 m² per child internally and the same again externally. Space regulations in Finland are similarly complicated by the use of a sliding scale depending on the number of children in total. Smaller schools have higher space-tochild ratios.

In Sweden and Italy, although not required by law, the space per child ratio is applied to the whole building. The requirement of a standard area of space per child has been abolished in Sweden, but good practice tells Swedish architects that 10–12 m² per child inside and 45 m² per child for the total site is the minimum. However, as this space ratio is not regulated, budget issues often undermine it. There has been some controversy with schools built recently having inadequate outdoor space. In Italy there is no national regulation of areas. Reggio Children pushed for a regional regulation, which resulted in allowances of 7.5 m² per child for internal playrooms (plus auxiliary spaces) and 30 m² outside. However, Reggio Children makes a point of always using more space than this. These generous allowances can include auxiliary spaces such as multipurpose transition zones, art rooms, joinery and door swings and all support spaces and furnishings.

In Vaduz, Liechtenstein, there were 12–20 children per class and about 90 m² per classroom, which gives a ratio of 4.5 m² per child. There are guidelines in France, but no area requirements. At the Marmoutier Preschool in Alsace, there were 28 children allowed per class, with 65 m² of space per classroom, giving a ratio of 2.3 m² per child. The architects who designed this centre were working on another in Paris with a playroom of 16 m² for the same number of children, which is a much smaller playspace ratio per child. In Ludwigsburg, Germany the calculation is 2.5 m² per child, per playroom, while in Finland, the Arkki centre was built on the basis of 5 m² per child, although by choice they never operate with the maximum number of children. All of these centres had additional shared facilities for the children such as art rooms, dining areas and gymnasiums, so the calculations are not direct comparisons with the regulations in Australia.

Maximum number of children per centre

In Australia, preschool and daycare centres are limited to no more than 90 children at the centre at any one time. This is not the case elsewhere. In Japan there is no limit as long as the space-to-child ratio is met. Fuji Kindergarten had a maximum of 600 children on site, while Machida Shizen Preschool had 350, but these are unusually high numbers for Japan, as most centres do not have the necessary space for this many children. Most of the European countries I visited had centre populations that sat between 40 and 100 children.

Populations varied significantly in Finland, because they combined more than one school on site. At Ruusutorppa, the Montessori preschool was quite small but the site population was over 1000. At Hosmarinpuisto, the preschool population was about 100 children, but the school population was 350. There is no maximum limit to school size in Finland—even 1000 pupils are permissible so long as the campus is built as a village. The average size is 300 students (primary only), but when combined with high schools, the population can be much bigger, almost like universities. My experience of this was that anything over about 350 students began to become impersonal, as the divergent groups on site did not mix.

Occupational health and safety

I was surprised to find that Sweden is only now catching up on providing wheelchair access to all centres and schools. In Britain there seemed to be an emphasis on providing the equipment but not necessarily on making the building comply, thus there were plasma televisions and computers in every room plus lavish sensory rooms for special needs, but in many cases the whole centre was not wheelchair accessible. In Australia, the comprehensiveness of codes and standards is commendable, but there is a danger of over-regulating and being overzealous with regard to safety, and inhibiting the development of stimulating curriculums and play.

Funding

In Europe, preschool is a child’s right. In Sweden and Germany it is provided for a very minimal subsidised fee. In Britain only 2 hours of preschool each day is free, worked in two shifts in busy centres. This has resulted in an imbalance where the centres are extremely crowded for 2 hours, and then under-utilised. They have had to find ways to entice people to the centres, opening the space up to the wider community.