Hestia
Type: Daycare centre Location: Amsterdam Client: Hestia Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, Claudia Linders, with Filipe Pocas Collaborator / associate: Labeled / Claudia Linders Floor area / size: 560 sqm Cost: Euro 670.000 First design: 2006-10-24
The Hestia Day-Care Centre follows the philosophy of Reggio Emilia. This philosophy also contains a number of explicit statements on architecture, which have been translated into a spatial concept for the new building.
The building as a city, as a collection of rooms: the building becomes a collection of different spaces in which the children can discover new places all the time; may go on a voyage of discovery. All of the spaces are connected to each other just as they are in a real city and you can go from a big room to a small one, from a high room to a low one.
A framework of service modules provides structure: the various spaces are structured by being fit into a grid. The body includes all service modules, such as sanitary facilities, store rooms and bedrooms.
Interior-exterior continuity: the grid is not confined to the building but also becomes the design concept for the exterior space. The rooms may be decorated with different hard surfaces and plants. The exterior is extended throughout the building by designing various rooms like exterior space.
Different perceptions of scale: different scales can be experienced as a result of the subtle use of height differences between the rooms themselves. In the central space, the large scale is perceptible because of the way the group spaces are separated, a smaller scale is perceptible because of the height and an even smaller scale is perceptible because of the sheltered spaces.
Xintian international kindergarten
Type: Kindergarten Location: Chaoyang district, Beijing Client: Xintian Real Estate Ltd Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water, Joost Lemmens with Chen Song, Ma Qing, Zai Xin, Floor area / size: 3.000 sqm First design: 2005-06-14 Status: preliminary design
In a large new residential area, NEXT was commissioned to design a series of public buildings, including a kindergarten, school, club and sales centre.
The first building to be executed is the kindergarten, which must be ready to receive 400 children in 2006. The kindergarten is created through three conceptual architectural steps: a projection of the typical Chinese school on the site, all classrooms face South.
The introduction of the common room transforms the traditional linear design of the school in an unexpected way: by 'pushing' the volume of the common room through the rectangular structure, all the floors are displaced along a curve in a stepped manner, creating an amphitheatre-like space inside the building, and creating a canopy from the overhang of the upper floors on the outside of the building.
The design organizes all classrooms around an internal space, the children's amphitheatre. This theatre is the social heart of the building: here children meet, see, play and are stimulated to learn. In this design, inside and outside are inextricably linked: form and content are one.
