We designed the circular ring shaped structure that provides enjoyable playground for children and easy access to escape route in case of emergency, having the courtyard in the middle, planting trees along the outer edge, and installing the deck, slopes, stairs, and the bridge along the circle between them. Covered with the solid trapezoid-shape wall and roof outside, its overall structure achieves to protect children’s pleasure with its strength. Its O-shaped building surrounding the courtyard with outside corridor with eaves for weather protection also provides comfort and a sense of safety to adults.

This structure helps busy parents to drop and pick up their children quickly without taking off shoes and nursery staff to help each other on the other side. Outer space of each floor provides not just open space outside, but also various changes, such as sunny spot and shade, higher eaves and narrower space under eaves, slopes, hills and cavities produced by changing the direction and the height of floors and roofs, so that children to spend the whole year here do not get bored. The half-circle-shaped spot garden to help ventilation also nurtures children’s affection to the nature by planting greens in the center.

From the perspective of dietary education to develop children’s appreciation and interest toward food, we place the vegetable garden on the rooftop and glass-walled kitchen on the first floor. The floor level of kitchen is settled lower to let children look into kitchen, in the same time, it is able to keep an eye on the courtyard in a cross shape to compensate for blind spot from the office. Finishing work of Interior and Exterior In order to give children the opportunity to learn the name of materials with feeling its original texture in the same time, we try to use “wood as wood-like, steel as steel-like and stone as stone-like” to keep the original texture of each material.

From this perspective, we didn’t use the primary colors. Instead, we exploit the 3-dimensional and so-called “primary color-like” structure to provide contrasting experience using the various spatial features and environment. "Amane" “Amane” stands for “round,” “around” or “all-around”, which represents the wish of the nursery school to let children feel the blessing of the all-around nature and also its architectural feature of circular shape around the woods. We wish that children can go around both inside and outside of the building, feeling everything around here, and nourish their sensibility and ability to think.

Project Credits Architect Firm: Aisaka Architects Atelier Architect: Kensuke Aisaka Location: Funabashi, Chiba Principal use: nursery school Total floor area: 1493.54㎡ Completion: August 2015