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Hakemiya Nursery School

With the aim of designing “not a small school, but a big house”, Rhythmdesign and Case-Real planned in Japan a space that can embrace kid’s daily activities and allows them to feel the building like ‘home’.

The project was planned by Rhythmdesign and Case-real with the request of a nursery school to be “not a small school, but a big house.”

The architects were asked to design a space which can embrace kid’s daily activities, such as eating, sleeping and playing, rather than designing a special space as a nursery school.

The result is a building that divides the open space into a courtyard and a small playground rather than having one big playground. This reduced scale allowed kids to feel the building like ‘home’, and it also helped expanding the varieties of kid’s activities in the continuous area of playground, nursery room and courtyard.

When nursery schools have different levels, nursery rooms for babies are usually placed on the first floor and those of children over 3 years old are placed at above levels due to the issue of evacuation. However, this project put priorities on maximising the activities of over 3 years old kids, therefore the rooms for over 3 years old are placed on the first floor level. A temporary evacuation space for babies is secured at the terrace on the second floor level. This terrace is enclosed so that is planned to be used as an protected daily play area. A combination of pent roof and hipped roof provides individualities in quality of space within each room.