Kindergarten, Lanište, Zagreb
The plot proposed for the construction of a kindergarten is located within the Lanište neighborhood, together with a school and tennis courts, and yet unoccupied plots for public and private development, surrounded by green spaces; far enough from the motorway but at a junction of important pedestrian routes. The kindergarten is placed in a kindergarten at the center of the plot leaving the access road and pedestrian corridor to the west. Such positioning creates two zones of land, a north and south one, future protected playground.
The main entrance is on the west side along the road corridor, an area of extension-thickening close to the object. Parallel to the public pedestrian path there is a semi-public area along the building proper from which we enter the nursery atrium. All the necessary entrances are located on this semi-public strip; the nursery and kindergarten entrances and the entrance to the administration. The volume of the house divides the plot following it in layout at the same time with the road access. The ground floor is the shape of an irregular rectangular, which in itself integrates all necessary features of a kindergarten.
The building has a simple and clear internal schema: the nursery units are at ground level, kindergarten ones on the floor and service areas, with a separate entrance from the east, in the basement. Common areas are separated with toilets and dressing rooms, and in the south connected by loggias. Due to the units’ depth, skylights are used on their northern side. The skylights one side face the common areas while also providing lighting the communication corridor with service areas. The skylights extend into the multi-purpose two-storey space with doors to the northern part of the plot, the entrance atrium and the administration. The entrance area distributes function in the building. It also serves as a transitional zone from the semi-public urban pedestrian zone, first to the expansion of a public pedestrian square and finally into the private area of the kindergarten itself. This transition is accentuated by drawing the house away from the plot boundary and in creation of a pedestrian zone, a public-square that draws the user into the kindergarten content. A gradual transition exists from public to private and external to internal, creating sufficient space for daily distribution of the anticipated number of users.
The building’s location on the plot implies new ways of using the kindergarten, inherent to this location only. Its functional structure articulates the whole given space so that the specific closed and open parts of the kindergarten each overflow one into another. Differentiating the unbuilt areas of the plot, but qualitatively in equal importance, “residents” who live in the area find new ways of using familiar content.
The building has a clear orientation and benefits from the south and north sides of the lot: common areas are the core content, extending to the south into covered terraces as a buffer zone to the playgrounds and in the north through the multipurpose hall, to the high-density protective vegetation. The building creates new spatial relationships in positioning clearly towards the street to the west; i.e. creating a semi-public space as a transition to the most private areas of the kindergarten, fully-protected playgrounds in the south and north.
The house consists of a one-storey volume of simple interior schemes and an irregular rectangular shape placed on the parcel so that the sides create areas related to the environment in different ways.
A reduction of the surrounding physical space to the building itself provides a unique enveloped building. The protective fencing exempts the unbuilt parts of the plot and narrows the space bounded by the material.
/ author with Vanja Biščanić and Zorana Protić, competition 2. prize, 2005. /
