John Li Studio completed a playful and functional space for the BBangel Daycare Center in Chengdu, China.

BBangel Daycare Center in Chengdu, sets up four nursing rooms for senior group and one room for baby group, opening sport area and static area. Also, it supplies a set of auxiliary function rooms, such as matched health service office and teacher’s office.

Static area is divided into opening lobby and semi-open place which has the shape of a cave. Hence, children could freely choose area where they feel comfortable to read picture book they loves, and to make artistic creation without any constraint.

Dynamic area is designed to hillside with the ups and downs changes of real hills, which is beneficial to children who could enjoy the running, walking and climbing in indoor activities, so that they improve their cognitive competence of natural environment.

At the beginning of the ancient Chinese poetry, The Book of Songs is like a vivid painting scroll, involving each plant that still represents enduring implication in the fleeting time. There are five class rooms takes their names from five of these plants which are described in the book, putting the paintings of teachers personally drawing five plants on the walls. This can help children to feel alive and vivid things through classical poems.

Furthermore, classrooms have several elaborate design details. On the door of classroom, there are two doors with characteristics of leaf, matching the height of adult and children, therefore, children could go through their own door to enter their world; the height of sills is designed to 600mm in order to fully introduce into sunlight and scenery outside the window; cabinets have two sizes, respectively the height of 800mm for adult and 450mm for children. That is suitable for children to take cup from the cabinet with mark whenever they want to drink water, and for them to clean cup to put it back on the place; partial ceilings are semi-open installing 4000k weight of chandelier which gives out neutral color light for all-around indirect illumination, conforming to the comfortable and eye-friendly lighting environment according to the national standard 300lux illumination.

Above functional areas concentrate on the second floor, and other multifunctional areas, as antechamber, waiting room, children’s dining hall on the first floor at the lobby. The whole rooms are decorated with large area wooden ornaments and sage green color, having a sense of simplicity and moderateness. Without complex color and ornaments, it aims to leave more room for the child’s imagination and make them be the master. The ceiling of lobby and the outlook of simulated nebula trajectory on the ground on behalf of the small of life in the vast universe, delivering the harmony between the heaven and human of world view.

The mobile glass of lobby on the first floor blurs the boundary between inside and outside. On the sunny afternoon, children could run on the grassland with freedom to feel the power of the nature. According to the height of original topography, human-made grass slope becomes the outside activity area for children. As for the planting, the situation that there are flowers in spring, shadow in summer, fruits in autumn and evergreen in winter is main aim to finish, so that children could learn about the change of season in a short distance.

Design: John Li Studio
Design Team: John Li, Yan Ping Gu
Architect: Feng Wei, Linn Jiang
Photography: Bin Zhao