▲Aerial view of the "Children's City"
origin
"Children's City", that is, Anhui Xinrui Happiness Early Childhood Education Industrial Park, is the second project jointly designed by Sixu Design and Anhui Xinrui Holding Group. Following the Quanjiao County Xinrui Guhe Middle School project, we have reached a long-term strategic cooperative relationship with Anhui Xinrui Holding Group. It is an honor to work with this visionary owner to create a comfortable, safe, natural and innovative Group flagship demonstration park in Chuzhou.
▲ Renderings of the "Children's City" urban interface
The project is located in Chuzhou, Anhui Province, which has a long history and profound cultural heritage, a pleasant climate and rich natural resources. Under the rapid development of cities, the demand for high-quality educational resources has surged, and the existing educational resources in the region have been unable to meet the growing demand.
▲"Children's City" near the park water system interface renderings
Creating a "Children's City"
Whether it is famous designers such as Isamu Noguchi, Kengo Kuma, and Harry Weiss, or psychologists such as Maria Montessori and Loris Maraguz, they think and explain how children should play and learn. We are inspired by this that the design should break through the tradition, break the adult thinking, and start from the perspective of children, so that children can independently perceive freedom, perceive nature, and perceive the future.
▲Hand-painted "Children's City" concept
▲ "Children's City" concept elements
Around the theme of "breakthrough", we extracted design elements from the regional culture of Chuzhou, got design inspiration from "mountains, water and city", and put forward the design concept of "children's city": taking the site as "water", using a large elevated platform to plan "mountain", placing four unit building blocks on the "mountain", one facing the city and the other facing the lake, converging into a garden to form a "small city pool" of "landscape and water".
01 A hillside lifts up space
The "City of Children" is a wonderful island. The base is about 110 meters long, about 98 meters wide, and the land area is 9913.6 square meters. It is necessary to set up 18 class unit activity classrooms and basic cultural activity spaces such as theaters, music and sports rooms, and picture book libraries, as well as high-standard children's activity spaces such as parent-child canteens, life experience rooms, and science exploration classrooms. At the same time, the Group specifically requested the establishment of a children's professional swimming pool, which will be the first children's professional swimming pool in Chuzhou.
▲ "Children's City" is like a wonderful island
▲The design effect of the entrance of the "Children's City"
How to achieve full functionality in this limited site and ensure a rich green ecological space?
The design decomposes a large structure into a series of assemblies, and uses the "island structure" vertically to split the upper and lower components, and sets up a large platform to divide the upper and lower levels while connecting the functional plates of each unit. Under the "island" are placed the theme activity functions and public communication places, and above the "island" are the unit activity classrooms and play cruising spaces. The structure stacked up and down greatly expands the functional space, which not only enriches the landscape level, but more importantly, creates a variety of levels of space and the mutual penetration of different environments.
▲"Children's City" is an "island structure"
▲The large platform is in an environmentally friendly form to create a rich landscape level
02 A bend of lake water surrounds the forest
The "Children's City" is a green forest. The tight double-storey structure and the natural surrounding of the building form multiple courtyards, and this intertwined spatial organization provides a flexible environment for more forms of activities, so that the park contains multi-level internal spaces - open internal and external transition spaces, three-dimensional and spacious streamline corridors and natural ecological activity areas... Anytime, anywhere so that kids can immerse themselves in nature...
▲ Children running and playing in the "City of Children"
▲ Children are immersed in nature to explore and play
The streamline layout not only adds different densities and scales to the first floor space, but also makes the two-story platform change with the change of curves, and each space is not unobstructed, but becomes a place where you can feel the details and changes when staying, walking, and running. The function of the outdoor is not clearly defined, and it is a free and flexible scene that children who grow up in this space in the future can create at will.
▲ Teachers and children reading on the lawn of the second-floor platform
▲Two-story platform curved streamline layout
The "Children's City" has both hidden corners and open and wide grounds. Children can find their favorite space, the central courtyard sprinkled with sunshine, the indoor and outdoor spaces to see and be watched, the game ramp around the big trees, the spiral staircase connecting up and down, the free and open curved walkway, the warm and casual reading area, the vibrant grass...
▲The courtyard is full of sunshine and light and shadow
▲Children running wildly in the park
03 A group of houses surrounds the city
The "Children's City" is a sunshine park. Our designs always follow the principle of encouraging children to move freely but with safety, and there is a timeless design standard - "there must be light", and it is okay not to turn on the lights. In order to ensure the safety of the children to the greatest extent, the kindergarten adopts a traffic flow system of people-vehicle diversion and dynamic and static partitioning. The pedestrian entrance is a spacious gathering place, where children walk into the park after saying goodbye to their parents, and what they see is the circular central green courtyard space.
▲ The south side of the "Children's City" is sunny on the park
▲After entering the park, directly enter the central green courtyard space
The sun-drenched atrium dissolves the oppressive feeling brought about by the building block, and the full openness makes the space present a more relaxed and comfortable relationship, providing a rich background for education. Light is the medium of communication between this space and nature, and the platform columns and railings and lush trees create a rich light and shadow, so that children in this space can feel the change of time at all times.
▲The decoration starts from the scale and comfort of children
▲Sunlight sprinkles the classroom through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the whole wall
Walking indoors, the sight is still warm and bright. The interior functional decoration design is also based on the scale and comfort of children, using a unit-type aluminum grille ceiling, and the visual height of the building is slightly lowered while adding warmth to the interior. Sunlight pours into the classroom through the floor-to-ceiling glass through the walls, and children can also look out the outdoors through the windows.
▲Bright and comfortable standard unit activity classroom
▲Each classroom is equipped with a clean and bright bathroom
The southwest side of the base is close to the urban water system green corridor park, so the design uses an open curved curved structure to create the south side of the building façade. The large area of floor-to-ceiling windows, corridors, and inner courtyards make the entire building present a transparent image, which not only incorporates the park landscape into the landscape of the park plot, but also brings sufficient light and excellent vision to the classroom.
▲Clean and bright children's professional swimming pool
▲The sun-drenched dance body activity room
▲Fun parent-child picture book reading room
Message
Children's buildings need sunshine, green and gentle care
Nature wants children to be like children before they become adults, and we want innocent children to be the leaders of this "little city".
Every scene, every corner, every sun, green and gentle care in the park is for the children who are in it. Children expect the scene around them to have a natural evolution that is constantly updated, and their continuous use of this space is to provide the motivation for the continuous evolution of the scene.
▲Children are happy to learn and grow up in the "small city"
The "Children's City" will be completed and put into use in 2022, and we look forward to the day when she welcomes the children.
With the right design, comfortable space, and annotation of children's growth bits and pieces, we have been working hard to practice.
▲Notes on the children's growth
▼ Basic information of the project
Project Name 丨 Anhui Xinrui Happiness Early Childhood Education Industrial Park
Project Location 丨Chuzhou, Anhui
The owner unit丨 Anhui Xinrui Holding Group
Design Unit 丨Shanghai Sixu Architectural Planning and Design Co., Ltd. (Architecture, Landscape, Interior Integration Design)
Presided over the design 丨 Wang Tao
Design team 丨Chen Lifeng, Cong Xiaoyi, Lu Qin, Yu Qian, Shao Rui, Li Qiushi, Li Gong, Xu Linfeng, Chen Xiaohao
Cooperative unit丨 Nanjing Youjia Architectural Design Co., Ltd. (building construction drawings)
The project area丨913.6㎡
Construction area 丨6985.06㎡
Expected completion丨 2022
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