The Frederiksvej Kindergarten in Denmark opened in May 2015, accommodating 182 children from infants to six year olds. Originally designed in 2011 for a competition by COBE architects in collaboration with Preben Skaarup landscape architects, Søren Jensen engineers and Learning Spaces consultants, the kindergarten was designed to create a small village. Archdaily
“We have worked to create a simple expression as a caricature of how a child might draw a house. The roofline for example, is kept uncluttered by means of hidden drains and precise material connections, and the windows are carefully designed to look frameless – as a child would maybe draw them,”
Dan Stubbergaard, Founder and Creative Director of COBE
Consisting of eleven small houses joint together to break away from the large scale institutional daycare environments. The learning spaces are centred around two winter gardens and the smaller houses are used to store toys, strollers and tools. It is necessary to create large spaces to house large numbers of children because of economics and space constraints; COBE has designed the site to ensure that children can still feel at home and be part of smaller groups within their larger community.
The village brings a sense of home with the silhouette of a child's house drawing. the use of textured materials, scale of the spaces and the connection to children's love of exploring and experimenting.
The natural light, shadows and ventilation of this space offer a beautiful mixture of the indoor / outdoor space.
Children can explore their spaces from different angles and choose if they would like to be in small enclosed spaces or larger wider open spaces.
There is diversity in the spaces to ensure that children can engage in different activities in all of the seasons.
“We wanted to create a kindergarten in a class of its own. A place that provides the best possible settings for our children to grow up in, and promotes their learning and creativity. Children are our most valuable resource and it is important that they get a good and safe childhood. Today there is a tendency towards building bigger and bigger kindergartens. But it is important for us to create intimacy and space for the children’s small worlds in the kindergarten, where they spend a large part of their day"
Dan Stubbergaard, Founder and Creative Director of COBE.
More information can be found at Archdaily
Details of Design
Architect: COBE
Location: Frederiksberg, Denmark
Educational Type: Kindergarten
Ages of Children: 0-6 years
Total floor area: 1700 m2
Capacity: 182 children
Completion: 2015
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