Atelier Apeiron completed a minimal yet expansive design for the Kindergarten of Museum Forest in Shenzhen, China.

Yunchao Xu/Atelier Apeiron introduces its latest design, Kindergarten of Museum Forest, a project following the “Apeironology” design philosophy which Yunchao Xu has always practiced to embrace the opening of boundaries, not restricted to definitions; crossing disciplinary lines, and not limited to typologies.

Modern society tames the flesh through disciplines, and social disciplines demand that people behave “correctly”. Discipline, Foucault believed, has become a prominent feature of modern education, permeating all of its aspects.

In the firm’s opinion, “a large playground, large classrooms, and multi-functional spaces” are the configurations that form a “good school”. But what about for kindergarten aged children? Yunchao Xu, lead architect of Atelier Apeiron, believes that the definition of so-called “good schools” also provides a kind of spatial discipline for children. As the first step of children into society, kindergartens should be open and free.

Shenzhen Second Kindergarten was founded in 1982, one of the first batch of public kindergartens in Shenzhen. The schools have witnessed the growth of Shenzhen and form a large part of the childhood emotions and memories of Shenzhen people. Given the land constraints of the area, in a crowded surrounding environment, and with limited investment in old buildings, people began to question the significance of the reconstruction. Within that context, Yunchao Xu seized the opportunity to participate in kindergarten projects for the first time.

Prior to the kindergarten projects, Yunchao Xu’s work was focused on large-scale buildings and urban planning for corporate headquarters, hi-tech parks, and cultural complexes. During his educational experience at Columbia University in the United States, he studied under Steven Holl and Kenneth Frampton, where he developed a fascination for the classic aesthetics of modernist architecture. He applied his previous experiences to the kindergarten project, but none of the subsequent plans satisfied him.

Since then, Yunchao Xu visited the old campus and walked freely through the trees as he listened to the children playing. From the perspective of a father and an architect, he realized that young children have different emotional connections to the scale of space than adults do. From that moment, the children’s feelings became the focal point of the design. He believed that, for young children, a free connected walkway is more attractive than a large playground, and a small classroom, without boundaries, is more spacious than a large classroom with complete facilities.

Design: Atelier Apeiron
Lead Designer: Yunchao Xu
Design Team: Hongrui Liu, Jiachuan Qi, Jianxuan Chen, Kan Gao, Elvis Lin, Yang Shi, Shengjie Zhang, Kun Qian, Lulu Chen, Tianxiong Li
Contractor: Shanghai Baoye Group Corp
Photography: Schran Images