Supergarten - Developing a relevant kindergartens of today

Premise 

Our children are sent to kindergarten with the best intention, believing that formal education is what kids need to become productive happy adults.  

Education begins at playschools, a place that handles these blooming minds and their first interaction of out of home learning with their peers. 

While education curriculum varies from place to place how can built form itself can be a great teacher of various elements of life? Kindergartens offer a lot of opportunities to teach children about basic spheres of life, yet most utilize rooms and surfaces only. 

How can the architecture of the kindergarten boost exploration and curiosity while creating a safe enclosure for the children?  How well are we managing these shoots of imagination especially in changing times of today? 

Elements 

There are several elements in a school that can introduce life that is not with a blackboard. Be it staircases, corridors, trees, soil, walls, floors, materials, and possibilities just begin. From natural to man made, every element in nature can be a teacher to a specific aspect of life. 

Yet we are mostly restrained to classrooms, and now rely on video screens to absorb knowledge. 

Unarguably, screens are the gold standard of providing a convenient audio-visual format of learning without much effort in a world full of free content.  

However, when 90% of our lives will be spent in front of screens, how can Kindergarteners be a space where children begin to learn without it? How can we switch classrooms or blur their boundaries so that the outdoors and indoors become one and offer new learning spaces without hassle every day? What can a model school-based on life skills learning will look like? 

Brief 

The design challenge is to conceive a Kindergarten for 75 children + 75 children in an expansion plan – based on the design theme above. 

The problem not only expands to the spatiality of the Kindergarten but explores new learning models/frameworks that help teachers to employ a different type of teachings in day to day life effortlessly.  The problem looks at opening up classrooms either partially or completely by creating smaller pockets or blurred borders promoting openness and learning from either peers or the environment.  

The site for this competition is located in Wellington, New Zealand. The place is known to be the capital of the country of New Zealand and has extremely pleasant outdoor weather during most parts of the year. The brief looks at manifesting the model school ideas on a site like this, where new aspects of learning can be demonstrated via architectural experimentation for children of today.   

Timeline 

Registration Closes: 10th May 2021 

Submission Deadline: 11th May 2021 

Result Announcement: 8th Jul 2021 

Prizes 

Prize pool of worth 24,000$ 

First Prize: 6000$ (For students and professionals) 

Runner Up: 6 x 1400$ (For students and professionals) 

People’s Choice: 4 x 600$ (Open for all) 

Honorable Mention: 12 x 600$ Each 

Learn more about this competition here uni.xyz/competitions/supergarten 

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