Amanenomori Nursery School

A nursery school of two-story building with rooftop terrace features 3-dimensional and circuit style structure.

The concept is to provide enough space for 160 children to play around in the nature and also for all their parents and nursery staff to feel safe. Children can go around both inside and outside of the building, feeling everything around here, and nourish their sensibility and ability to think.

We designed the circular ring shaped structure that provides enjoyable playground for children and easy access to escape route in case of emergency, having the courtyard in the middle, planting trees along the outer edge, and installing the deck, slopes, stairs, and the bridge along the circle between them. Covered with the solid wall and roof outside, its overall structure achieves to protect children’s pleasure with its strength.

For thorough energy saving, we adopt the eaves to control sunlight, the spot garden to improve ventilation, the rooftop deck and vegetable garden for heat insulating of rooftop, Earth Tube heating system to use geothermal heat, the river and the pond to reuse rainwater, and solarpanels to produce circulating power. Watching these structures in daily life, children can learn about "the nature" including phenomenon about plants or the wind and rain.

In order to give children the first opportunity to learn the name of materials with its original texture, we try to use “wood as wood-like, steel as steel-like and stone as stone-like” to keep the original texture of each material, without using the primary colors.