Twenty key points in kindergarten design

1. Expansion of objects of use

Currently, the objects of use in kindergartens generally break through the original limitations of 3 to 6 years old and expand to 2 to 6 years old; and high-quality kindergartens will inevitably expand to 0 to 6 years old, opening parent-child kindergartens, infant classes, etc.

Even if it is not open now, parent-child parks will definitely be opened in the near future.

Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and other regions have successively put forward requirements that provincial demonstration parks must set up parent-child parks.

The trend of early childhood education at a younger age is very obvious.

So in terms of space layout, indoor and outdoor venues for the education of infants aged 0 to 3 years old should be considered.

In the future, for group-run kindergartens with dense layout, such as the many public kindergartens in Xiacheng District, Hangzhou, education targets aged 0 to 3 and 3 to 6 years old will usually be divided into separate kindergartens, and traditional kindergartens will be divided into Infant kindergartens and kindergartens can enhance the pertinence of education and improve educational effectiveness.

Similar to the current separation of model high schools and junior high schools.

Many kindergartens usually cover five or six age groups from 0 to 6 years old.

This means that children will spend four, five, or even six years in kindergarten.

With the opening of parent-child kindergartens, the impact of parent participation on kindergartens must be considered.

At the same time, infant classes mostly adopt a half-day system (if they are full, they can adopt a morning and afternoon system), and the pick-up and drop-off requirements are also different from those of kindergarten classes.

Then, infant education between 0 and 3 years old and early childhood education between 3 and 6 years old, that is, parent-child kindergarten and kindergarten, must have separate functions.

What needs special attention is that as the cultural service function of kindergartens for the community is enhanced, the kindergarten may become the cultural and artistic activity center of the community and become a "community school".

In addition to traditional kindergartens and parent-child parks, kindergartens may also provide pregnancy guidance, family education, homework tutoring for primary school students, weekend interest classes, community parent-child libraries, community choirs, community dance teams, and elementary school student development Training and other services.

In this way, the kindergarten’s service targets will include primary school students, adults, and the elderly.

“Starting at the age of zero and continuing throughout life” will become our new school orientation.

Different objects of use and different service functions put forward different requirements for architectural design.

2. Division of space

On the one hand, the kindergarten building can be divided into three parts: office reception area, teaching activity area, and logistics service area.

The office reception area mainly includes the reception hall, health room (including morning check-up and isolation room), guard room, public toilet, principal's room, financial room, director's room, conference room, and teacher's office , archives room, etc.;

The teaching activity area includes classrooms for each class (including sleeping rooms and toilets), parent-child garden, multi-functional hall, scientific discovery room and art room, piano room, library and other special functions room;

The core of the logistics service area is the kitchen (including dressing room, staple food warehouse, non-staple food warehouse, pastry room, raw processing room, cooked processing room, disinfection room, catering room, teachers’ restaurant, boiling water room, Fruit storage room), as well as office supplies warehouse, logistics supplies warehouse, maintenance warehouse, faculty toilets, etc.

On the other hand, outdoor venues can also be divided into three parts: public activity area, children's activity area, and green area.

The public activity area mainly includes the kindergarten entrance, roads, publicity display areas, teachers’ carports, etc.;

The children’s activity area includes the playground, large toy area, sand pool, species colonial areas etc.

The green area includes the flat green area inside and outside the fence and the three-dimensional green area above the building and fence.

The entry and exit routes and entrances of kindergartens should also be prioritized, such as dedicated passages for logistics services.

3. Architectural Shape

The facade shape of a kindergarten is directly related to the impression and evaluation of the kindergarten by parents and children.

The overall layout of the kindergarten must be varied, pursue the fun of the space, and create an interesting and varied space so that children can enjoy the kindergarten and learn and grow through games.

It is taboo to have a plain exterior facade, not as straight as a military camp. It is required to have arcs, full of dynamics, straight and well-proportioned high and low convex and concave far and near areas, changeable reality and reality, distinctive personality and strong visual impact.

If the building itself is rigid, you can consider placing some fiberglass giraffes and other animal and plant sculptures on the roof, and hang some curved and round shapes on the exterior walls to break the straight and rigid shape of the stairs.

The stairwell can be raised and spire added to become the commanding heights of the castle.

With functional zoning, the kindergarten can be designed with main and auxiliary buildings, or as many buildings as possible, such as administrative office building, infant teaching building, early childhood teaching building, professional function building, post-service building, etc.

4. Rooftop playground

As the floor area ratio of kindergartens becomes higher and higher, outdoor activity venues will inevitably be unable to meet the needs of use, and rooftop playgrounds have become an issue that must be considered during design.

In addition to waterproofing, the rooftop playground is mainly a safety issue.

It is recommended to use a fence of no less than 1.5 meters directly around the roof to ensure the safety of young children.

5. Set up as many special function rooms as possible and improve utilization ratio

Special function rooms can be set up on the north side of the inner corridor for convenience.

6. There are no dormitories for teachers and staff in the kindergarten

In a standardized kindergarten, no one is allowed to stay except for the guards. It is safe, hygienic and easy to manage.

7. Gate planning

The gate is the most eye-catching place in the kindergarten and the first place that parents come into contact with.

On the premise of ensuring safety, try to be as open, transparent and atmospheric as possible. Try not to use a completely closed door, that would be too depressing.

The planning of the gate is usually designed as an overall system with the bulletin board, kindergarten signboard, door header, etc.

For example, it is necessary to consider the hanging position of various plaques in the kindergarten, set up a kindergarten publicity board next to the gate, publish notices, recipes, display recent activities of the kindergarten, etc.

To ensure safety, the kindergarten implements separation of people and vehicles, and parents are prohibited from entering the kindergarten with all kinds of vehicles. Therefore, it is necessary to plan and arrange the parking location in front of the door in advance to ensure orderly pick-up and drop-off.

With the improvement of security requirements, a guard room must be set up at the gate and equipped with corresponding equipment in accordance with public security and fire protection requirements.

8. Lobby Planning

The hotel-style lobby is the basic feature of today’s modern kindergartens and a manifestation of the kindergarten’s service awareness.

One-stop service for parents, complete all procedures such as consultation, registration, payment, etc. in the reception hall, which is a manifestation of high-quality service.

Therefore, kindergartens must try to design a reception hall or a dedicated parent reception room as grand as possible.

This hall can be 100~300m2.

Its functions can be reflected in two aspects:

First, it undertakes traditional functions such as consultation, registration, payment, parent reception, relevant department leaders and peer visits.

Correspondingly, the kindergarten’s janitor, office, finance and other functional departments can be merged into the front desk, which is the office.

This is not only convenient for parents, but also saves manpower and improves work efficiency (a dedicated person will provide one-stop service every day). The corresponding functional offices such as the principal's office and health room are located near the hall, forming the administrative office area of ??the kindergarten.

The second is functional integration.

It can integrate multi-functional halls, art rooms, libraries, social activity areas, and some external office service functions to improve building utilization.

The lobby is an intensive public activity space with complete functions and high site utilization, which deserves everyone's attention.

9. Set up centralized office areas

Office areas in traditional kindergartens are usually scattered and use numerous offices, lacking communication and understanding between them.

Modern kindergartens usually set up a centralized office area next to the lobby on the first floor to integrate all administrative, logistics, teaching and other office resources of the kindergarten. Or it can be divided into two major parts: teaching, administration and logistics.

The advantages of centralized office are:

◆Save space.

◆Easy to manage and save energy.

◆Convenient to serve parents, one-stop service.

◆Enable colleagues to support and understand each other.

10. Wide corridors

Required to be more than 3 meters, safe and atmospheric.

11. Floor height

The floor height of kindergarten classrooms is increasing from 3 meters to 4 meters.

Foreign kindergartens usually use large spaces with sloped roofs, and the floor height is five or six meters, which looks very grand.

The tall space and superior lighting conditions make the kindergarten more transparent and comfortable.

As the floor height increases, a loft can be built indoors and the sleeping room can be placed above to save space.

This is a very important factor in increasing floor height.

But the floor height cannot exceed 4.5 meters.

If it is too high, it will easily cause psychological discomfort to children; at the same time, it will reduce heating and cooling efficiency and waste energy.

12. Pay attention to the treatment of the sleeping room

Napping in kindergarten is a big problem - it takes up a lot of space and requires a lot of labor.

Traditional kindergartens often adopt a "three-section" layout: activity rooms and bedrooms of the same structure of 50 to 60 m2 on the left and right sides, and a bathroom of 10 to 15 m2 in the middle.

Such a layout wastes space, affects the layout, and causes a heavy workload for teachers.

Therefore, most current kindergartens are pursuing another kind of "sleep-education integration": the activity room and sleeping room are combined into one 60-80m2 room, and the sleeping room no longer occupies a separate room.

This will save about 30% of space;

At the same time, the activity room is large and the area layout is more convenient.

There are usually two ways to use the same room as the activity room and sleeping room:

One is to use an activity bed or a wall cabinet bed.

In this way, teachers have a heavy workload of moving beds every day, and it is not convenient to create an educational environment.

Another option is to build a loft.

Building an attic directly in the classroom will make the classroom environment cleaner, reduce teachers' workload, and make it easier for teachers to tidy up the teaching environment when they are on duty at noon.

More and more kindergartens use this method.

Key points of building a loft:

1. Coordination of the upper and lower heights of the loft

The purpose of building a loft is to save space, so the lower part of the loft must be able to be effectively used , otherwise the meaning of building a loft will be lost. For this reason, the height below the attic must be above 2m, otherwise it will be visually very depressing and the use value will be greatly reduced.

Because the upper part is only for sleeping at noon, make sure that the children do not touch their heads. The height should be about 1.3m. In the middle, I-beam is used to add a paving plate, which is about 500px thick. The lower part is preferably about 2.5~3m. Therefore, usually when the floor reaches a height of about 4m (the optimal height is 4.5m), it is suitable for attic construction.

2. Problems with stairs going up and down the attic

It is recommended to use foldable and retractable stairs - usually put them away and close the cover so that the stairs cannot be seen.

3. Ventilation issues

In addition to natural ventilation, oscillating wall fans can be used. When the indoor temperature is not very high, there is no need to turn on the air conditioner in the entire room, which is both safe and energy-saving.

4. The location of the attic

Because the attic takes up space after all, especially for rooms with a floor height of less than 4m, the attic can easily make the space look cramped. For this reason, we must consider cleverly "hiding" the attic so that people will not be aware of the existence of the attic at first glance, and the view will appear to be wide.

You can choose to arrange the attic above the entrance in the opposite direction - when you enter the door and see the open space, it is difficult to imagine that the attic is directly overhead.

Accordingly, try not to add pillars in the middle of the attic, but make full use of the beams to hoist the attic to the beams.

Or layout it above the bathroom or cloakroom.

5. The size of the loft

In order to allow all children to sleep in the loft, the loft needs to be made into two rows of beds with an aisle in the middle, with a maximum width of 3m; according to 32 people per class (16 people in a single row) *0.5m per person = 8m long, usually it can be solved by making a pavement on one wall of the classroom.

If there are many children, you can add a few movable beds to sleep under, and you don’t have to stick to them all.

13. Cloakroom

A separate cloakroom can easily affect lighting and waste space.

The wardrobe can be built directly into the corridor wall or under the sleeping loft.

14. Lighting

Keep as few walls as possible and use more glass windows.

The windows should be as large as possible and the window sill should be as low as possible.

The wall skirt should be as low as possible, mostly below 1250px.

The exterior wall can be directly made of floor-to-ceiling glass to expand lighting and children’s vision.

The door should be transparent.

But at least there is a large area of ??wall for theme display; it also enhances children's sense of security

15. Doors

Require to be transparent.

There are windows of various shapes on the door to increase children's sense of security and sense of exploration.

White and other light colors are mostly used.

Minimize the number of doors. For example, for the bathroom door, you can just use the door frame.

16. Color design

Pay attention to integrity and systematicity, introduce VI visual identification system, and scientific planning.

Don’t paint the wall casually, especially without leaving blank space, as there will be bells and whistles everywhere.

Pay attention to the use of colors inside and outside the building, on different floors, and in different functional areas.

Pay attention to the local climate and geographical conditions. For example, in the north, cold colors are less used.

17. Pay attention to greening

It is required to hire professional design and maintenance to improve the level of greening.

For example, cooperate with the community property management and contract out the greening, etc.

For greening, plant more trees and have rich tree species.

As kindergarten land becomes more and more scarce, the flat greening rate is getting lower and lower. We must pay attention to the three-dimensional greening on walls, stairs, and indoors to increase the greening coverage.

18. The outdoor activity area should have ups and downs and be full of wild interest.

You can design a hillside with a cave underneath.

The hillside can separate the children’s activity area and the logistics service area.

19. Large Sand Pool

Other equipment can be placed in the sand pool.

The sand pool can be connected to walls and hillsides for easy cleaning.

The sand pool is of great significance to the development of young children.

But in our outdoor environment, we pay very little attention to the sand pool.

Due to factors such as hygiene level and maintenance costs, kindergartens use less water, which highlights the role of sand pools.

Twenty. Independent water and electricity meters for each class

Especially in the kitchen, which is a large energy consumer, it is necessary to install independent water and electricity meters and calculate them daily, weekly, and monthly.

The weekly or monthly consumption data of each class is clear, easy to calculate, manage, energy-saving and environmentally friendly.

It is easy to mobilize the enthusiasm of all employees and children to save.

For example, a kindergarten can set up a public notice board to register the daily, weekly or monthly water and electricity consumption of each class; calculate the per capita consumption, and continue to carry out energy conservation and environmental protection activities throughout the kindergarten.

Professional kindergarten design