ITU Dr. Sedat Urundul Nursery School

Narratives

Architect Narrative

NURSERY SCHOOL _______________________________

The nursery school building with its 2500 m2 useable area and 200-student capacity, was planned to serve the 3-6 age-grouped children of the university’s personnel and academic staff.

EDUCATIONAL CONSIDERATION_______________________
Today, many aspects of change in the field of education affect the design of schools. Existing educational buildings and tested approaches are no longer appropriate to the new needs. The new demands call for new solutions.

This building accommodate both the known needs of today, and the uncertain demands of the future. Especially developments in educational technology, particularly the increasing availability of personal computers, have changed the modes of learning and scale and scope of information available to schools. But, information technology is not the only driver of change in school design. It is now generally accepted that learning must continue throughout life and schools can play a big role in supporting lifelong education. And we believe this building will be first step to the both challenging ways: technology and life-long education process. In brief we tried to provide an environment that will support and enhance the learning process and encourage innovation and creativity.

In the light of these educational considerations, we aimed to create a project which has a special aesthetic delight emerging from the relationship of the buildings to the surrounding environment, from the choice of materials, from form and proportion, from lighting and acoustics and so on. We believe that the aesthetic delight increase the satisfaction from the working and learning environment for the staff and the students.

AESTHETIC CONSIDERATIONS; MATERIALS; STRUCTURE; CONSTRUCTION______________________________________
The primary design-concept was to ‘design’ a building that young children can relate to, comprehend and define. Aesthetically the building is attractive both to adults and children, but is especially built on a scale suitable for children.

The two-storey building encompasses spaces allocated for the common use of children, such as 10 group rooms for different age groups, a computer room, and a music room, as well as rooms allocated for the personnel. In terms of orientation, the back of the building faces north, allowing all group rooms to face southeast with a forest view. The building’s form itself defines the southern playground and garden.

The internal organisation of the building can also be read in the third-dimension, in the building’s form itself. The form of the building is defined by 3 curvilinear masses that are linked by a central mass. The two southeastern wings hold the group rooms on both stories, while the northwestern wing is allocated mainly to administrative offices and staff rooms, with some common-use areas for the children. The central atrium is designed to enable visual communication between the ground floor and the first floor, thereby linking activities on the two floors. The central atrium -a multipurpose hall— is also the main entrance for the school. From there the classrooms and all the other facility rooms can be reached. With this kind of arrangement it could be possible to avoid from using any anonymous institutional corridors.

The arc-shaped beams that reflect the geometry of the building and single column supporting these beams at their point of intersection define the foyer, leading to the atrium on the ground floor, from where circulation elements enable access to the first floor. Although the main function of the ramp in the atrium is to provide safe vertical circulation enabling children to move between floors, this specific element was selected with the idea of offering the children a permanent element that could be incorporated in their self-created play-world.

Roof lights are placed along the lines of intersection where the three masses meet the atrium. The passageway that links the three wings on the first floor follows the reflection of this lighting system. The placement of the lighting system not only accentuates the linearity of the bridge, but also allows for the atrium to benefit from maximum natural daylight.

Reinforced concrete is used in the construction of all three masses, while ceramic is used on the facades for durability and ease in maintenance. The structural system and materials used in the construction of the atrium reflect its flexible multi-purpose function. Steel beams are used as a part of the structural system, while all exterior walls are curtained with transparent materials throughout the two floor, forming a transitional space between indoors and outdoors. This transparency adds visual emphasis on the differentiation of the three separate masses, accentuating their individual forms.

PROJECT SIGNIFICANCE_________________________
The visual relationship achieved between the interior and exterior through the continuity of glass extending from ground level to the top of the first floor gives the atrium, which serves as a transitional zone, a unique quality. On the other hand, the large windows used in the group rooms visually carry the surrounding greenery, which was one of the main selection criteria for site location, into the rooms.

We aimed to realise an atmosphere of “open communication” in which children learn as much from each other as they do from the teachers. This atmosphere was realised by the allocation an atrium at the core of the building. All spaces within the building, whether allocated to personnel or to the children, have a direct or controlled visual relationship with each other and with atrium. The main idea behind this approach is to ease the continually required supervision of children, and to create an atmosphere that emphasises the existence of a common and shared life. We believe that this kind of organisation encourage experimentation, participation and a sense of community.

The project was designed and realised with a mission to carry a nursery school beyond existing stereotypes, toward becoming an entity that carries the responsibility of setting a solid foundation for the young generation of the 3 rd millennium during its first steps into education. Therefore, spatial features presumably desired by children were questioned and analysed, and ‘the creation of spaces that increase a child’s creativity’ was the main concept used in design. The building, enriched with an array of different dynamic perspectives from all interior spaces, is beyond any stereotypical building. The architecture of the building also aims to develop the creativity of children with the large variety of images it has offering when approached from different angles.