The project designreflects the ‘Montessori’ ideal learning environment, where a learning space should resemble a home more than a typical classroom. Therefore, the learning area is split into multiple small-sized “rooms”, where all the children could feel more like their home when they come to school. The layout of these “rooms” has been designed to correlate with each of children’s activities. The best learning environment for children in these ages is nature, that why the building layout has been carefully planned to support children’s self-learning and integrated both indoor and outdoor spaces, architecture and landscape to provide different learning activities.
This layout consists with different 'nature' elements, and each of them is suitable for the different stages of a child’s development. The selected natural elements which have been used to create an ideal learning environment in this project include caves, sand lawn, mounds, and trees.
1. The 'cave' concept has been transformed into wooden layers at the entrance. The spaces between cascaded layers allow the natural light to pass through making them dominant, interesting and creating gently fresh atmosphere for the kids.
2. “Sand lawn” is used in the playground around the Toddler Building to facilitate development of the sense of touch in toddlers.
3. Freeform“Mound” is used in the landscape of the court and surrounding areas, where children could run around and utilize the space for outdoor learning experience. This area is also used to connect all the buildings and learning spaces together.
4. “Trees” are planted to provide shades for the outdoor learning spaces.
This project also includes one building for parents, and two buildings for classrooms, where the buildings are interconnect with covered walk ways.
All the buildings were painted in grey tones alternating with wooden slat to create a smooth, yet warm feeling to the eyes of the outsiders. The architecture is designed to be simple allowing children to easily understand the layout of the project. Also, wooden slat involves in minimizing the high temperature from sunlight, so that children are exposed to just enough sunlight that is optimal for their visions and learning. Additionally,this wooden slat would limit children’s view of the outside, which can help decreasing distractions from the outside of the classrooms and bringing children to focus better on their current tasks.
The classroom-buildings also consist of multiple smaller rooms where serve different activities. This planning was inspired from a child’s home, where in each ‘room’ they could play, learn, and develop different skills and knowledge. Thus, a ‘smaller room’ is more suitable and more stimulating for children in learning than a big regular open room.
