The best daycare center in the world. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects
31/08/2020.
[Copenhagen] Denmark
metalocus, ANDRÉS ROJAS
metalocus, ANDRÉS ROJAS
Entitled Kids City, was the answer by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen for growing Copenhagen. Projections show that by 2025, the city will have 90,000 new residents will have moved to the city – 22,000 between the ages of 0 and 18.
If we are to guarantee welfare for children in a future of fewer resources and increased demands for efficiency, it calls for innovation! Kids City illustrates how the welfare buildings of tomorrow can guarantee that spatial quality and the highest level of welfare services can go hand in hand.
If we are to guarantee welfare for children in a future of fewer resources and increased demands for efficiency, it calls for innovation! Kids City illustrates how the welfare buildings of tomorrow can guarantee that spatial quality and the highest level of welfare services can go hand in hand.
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen. Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST
Skecth. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
Skecth. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
Skecth. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
Urban skecth. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
Site plan. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
Ground floor plan. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
First floor plan. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
Second floor plan. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
Elevation. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
Elevation. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
Elevation. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
Axonometric. Kids’ City Christianshavn by COBE and NORD Architects Copenhagen.
The team by NORD Architects Copenhagen, COBE, PK3 Landscape Architects and the engineering company, Grontmij and the future users re-thought the way we create and operate day care.
Kids’ City Christianshavn is the largest preschool and youth club in Denmark, hosting 750 children. The enlargement of facilities for children presents a significant issue. If we have to increase the sizes of our institutions to accommodate the growing population of children, how can we avoid creating generic day care factories?
With this challenge in mind, this facility is designed to be a small city for kids, rather than one big building. And like Copenhagen, this new city have different neighborhoods, houses, public spaces, squares, and parks – it even has a city hall, a fire station, a restaurant, a stadium, a library, a museum, and a factory.
Kids’ City Christianshavn aims to be the world’s best city for kids, celebrating the diversity of a city.
Kids’ City Christianshavn is the largest preschool and youth club in Denmark, hosting 750 children. The enlargement of facilities for children presents a significant issue. If we have to increase the sizes of our institutions to accommodate the growing population of children, how can we avoid creating generic day care factories?
With this challenge in mind, this facility is designed to be a small city for kids, rather than one big building. And like Copenhagen, this new city have different neighborhoods, houses, public spaces, squares, and parks – it even has a city hall, a fire station, a restaurant, a stadium, a library, a museum, and a factory.
Kids’ City Christianshavn aims to be the world’s best city for kids, celebrating the diversity of a city.
Project description by COBE - NORD Architects Copenhagen
Copenhagen is growing! Projections show that by 2025, 90 000 new residents will have moved to the city – 22 000 between the ages of 0 and 18. If we are to guarantee welfare for children in a future of fewer resources and increased demands for efficiency, it calls for innovation!
Entitled Kids City, NORD Architects Copenhagen, in close collaboration with COBE, PK3 Landscape Architects and the engineering company, Grontmij and the future users, have re-thought the way we create and operate day care. Kids City illustrates how the welfare buildings of tomorrow can guarantee that spatial quality and the highest level of welfare services can go hand in hand.
Kids City was inspired by its surroundings– the city of Copenhagen, complete with a fire station, town hall, museum, restaurant, sports stadium, various neighbourhoods, squares and parks. All of the iconic and central elements of our society are scaled down in the children’s city; adapted to the needs of the children. Life in the new city promotes a coherent, challenging environment, where the inspiring diversity of their urban and natural surroundings co-creates the best possible learning and developmental conditions for the users.
Based on a triangular plot on Christianshavn in the heart of Copenhagen, between the urban blocks of the main street and the diversity of Freetown Christiania, the project’s ambition is to create a children’s city for 710 children and young people between the ages of 0 and 15. Despite requiring three times more users than an average Danish childcare centre, Kids City has been designed so that, in terms of scale and character, it will accommodate the child as an individual, instead of portraying an enlarged version of a traditional day care centre. The project offers the best developmental conditions for the children, and rethinks usage in the form of multi-functional and flexible buildings, able to accommodate both current and future needs. We call this: “intelligent” square metres. The result is that large areas can be used for a range of functions, which move beyond the day care centre, school and club, thus also benefiting the cultural and recreational life of the local community.
With a focus on urban life, movement, and cohesion, Kids City is comprised of numerous small houses and buildings, which give the place its very own identity. A floating basketball cage between two roofs will create a golden gate from the outside “real” metropolis. This will be the entrance to the new “city-within-the-city”. Kids City aims to transform the city as an organism into a children’s universe with density, public spaces, streets, a beach and attractions.
More information
Architects
Cobe and NORD Architects Copenhagen
Project team
Competition.- Dan Stubbergaard, Rune Boserup, Frederik Lyng, Mikkel Reedtz Morris, Greta Tiedje, Chloé Blain, Dimitrie Grigorescu, Cristina Matos, Rodrigo Bandini dos Santos, Hannes Kalau vom Hofe, Andrea Pieretti, Christian Sander, Martin Jonsbak Nielsen.
Project.- Andrea Pieretti, Chloé Blain, Christian Sander, Cristina Matos, Dan Stubbergaard, Dimitrie Grigorescu, Frederik Lyng, Greta Tiedje, Hannes Kalau vom Hofe, Marianne Filtenborg, Martin Jonsbak Nielsen, Martina Pedersen, Mikkel Reedtz Morris, Milan Milenkovski, Rasmus Jessing, Rodrigo Bandini dos Santos, Rune Boserup.
Collaborators
NORD Architects Copenhagen. Landscape architects.-PK3/BOGL. Engineers.- Sweco.
Client
Copenhagen Municipality.
Ayuntamiento de Copenhague.
Contractor
Jakon, Grontmij.
Area
4,670 m²
Dates
Competition.- 2012.
Completed.- 2017.
Programme
Nursery, daycare and after school club, age 0-15.
Photography
Morten Rask Gregersen, Johannes Molander Pedersen. NORD Architects
NORD Architects is a creative office, established in Copenhagen, Denmark and by founding partners in 2003, Morten Rask Gregersen, Johannes Molander Pedersen and Mia Baarup Tofte. During the years we have employed a multidisciplinary staff of urban planners, architects, landscape architects, process consultants, art historians, academics within social and cultural studies along with our technical staff. Besides realizing various projects, they are often asked to lecture and have been taking part in exhibitions and publications on several occasions. NORD Architects operates as total advisors, collaborators and client advisors on projects within the public and private sector.
The office is taking on a broad range of assignments within architecture, urban development and innovation processes. Descripción NORD Architects is known by the ability to develop and innovate content and engage with the clients and users relating to a project.
Their work is often characterized by a high level of complexity that is organized and embodied in a specific design. They consider every project we undertake as a process of change. Therefore they focus on how to design the process itself. Theye call it process design. This method has resulted in the realization of several prizewinning projects spanning from the development of new types of institutions, urban spaces, urban development strategies and learning environments.
The office is taking on a broad range of assignments within architecture, urban development and innovation processes. Descripción NORD Architects is known by the ability to develop and innovate content and engage with the clients and users relating to a project.
Their work is often characterized by a high level of complexity that is organized and embodied in a specific design. They consider every project we undertake as a process of change. Therefore they focus on how to design the process itself. Theye call it process design. This method has resulted in the realization of several prizewinning projects spanning from the development of new types of institutions, urban spaces, urban development strategies and learning environments.
DAN STUBBERGAARD. COBE
COBE is a limited liability company owned by Founder and Creative Director Dan Stubbergaard. COBE is a progressive and contemporary community of architects that focuses on architecture and design – from buildings to public space, to large scale urban planning. In 2005 Dan Stubbergaard and Vanessa Miriam Carlow founded COBE. The name COBE is derived from the two cities the founders are coming from - COpenhagen and BErlin. Since its establishment, COBE has gained international recognition through the realization of beautiful and innovative projects.
Today, COBE is two separate companies - one seated in Copenhagen (COBE ApS headed by Dan Stubbergaard), and one in Berlin (COBE Berlin GmbH headed by Prof. Dr. Vanessa Miriam Carlow). The two offices have shared a number of projects in the past, and apart from developing projects individually, they continue to share and collaborate on selected projects - also in the future.
COBE is situated in a refurbished warehouse centrally located on the Copenhagen harbor front, and currently employs approximately 50 dedicated architects, urban planners and administrative staff of different nationalities.
COBE is run by a management team consisting of Dan Stubbergaard and a core team of Project and Administration Managers. Together, they are responsible for the company’s overall development and strategic long-term goals.
All projects are developed in project teams, made up of a mix of senior and junior architects, which are led by a Project Manager. Cross-disciplinary teamwork is central in our working method and each project team cooperates with a wide range of external experts in order to obtain the best opportunities and potential towards finding innovative solutions in each particular project.
Selected awards.-
[2012] Nykredit’s Architecture Prize. Nykredit Foundation.
MIPIM Award - Best Refurbished Building. The Library Marché International des Professionnels de l'Immobilier.
[2011] Copenhagen Award for Architecture - Best Public Building. The Library. City of Copenhagen.
[2006] The Golden Lion. Best National Pavilion. International Venice Biennale of Architecture.
