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KINDERTAGESSTÄTTE - KINDERGARTEN

• Berlin-Bucholz, Germany
• Complete
• 10,000 Square Feet
• Client: ERGERO mbH
• Architects: Frank Barkow, Douglas Gauthier, Regine Leibinger
• Design Team: Amy Barkow, Martin Heberle, Lydia Heine, Karin Lohrman, Oliver Neumann
• Awards: 1998 Architecture Magazine Visionary Architecture Citation; 1998 Bund Deutcher Architekten, Berlin Architekturpries; 1995 First Place Kindertagesstätte Competition
• Selected Media: Architectural Record; Metropolis; Architecture Magazine; Baumeister; Bauwelt; AA Files 31
• Büro Kiefer, Landscape Architects
• HTPS, Hoch-und Tiefplanung Schroder, Engineers
• BLS Energieplan, MEP Engineers
• Elizabeth Felicella, Werner Humacher, Photography

The Kindergarten, together with the Youth Center, was awarded via a 1st place, collaborative competition entry to serve a new housing complex built in the far-East region of Berlin. The 10,000 ft2, concrete masonry frame building has a north façade of unstained, tongue-in-groove larch siding, and remaining façades of horizontally banded, multi-colored, stained lightweight concrete fiber or glass panels over insulation and structure. The Kindergarten’s circulation space collapses in on itself into a taut corridor breaching the space at either double-height entrance openings. On the south-facing portion of the building, there are six classrooms with adjacent support group rooms. To the north side of the double height corridors are the administration offices, kitchen and service rooms. The roofs of the southern bands of the building have a planted green roof of indigenous grasses; the northern bands have exposed wood beams under a standing-seam aluminum clad roof. The ground plane of the green areas is cross-hatched into a matrix of children’s activity zones recalling both the glacier-etched landscapes of the Berlin basin and the marked landscapes of a war-torn and, for many, politically separated Berlin.

All content © 2011 GAuthier Architect P.C.