Architects: Vo Trong Nghia Architects
Location: Đồng Nai, Vietnam
Principal Architects: Vo Trong Nghia, Takashi Niwa, Masaaki Iwamoto
Project Team: Tran Thi Hang, Kuniko Onishi
CFD analysis: Environment Simulation Inc.
Area: 3,800 sqm
Photographs: Hiroyuki Oki
Contractor: Wind and Water House JSC
Client: Pou Chen Vietnam
Site Area: 10,650 sqm
This kindergarten, for 500 pre-school children, is a prototype for sustainable education spaces in tropical climates. The plan was designed for the factory workers children of Pou Chen Vietnam.
The building concept is a “Farming Kindergarten” with a continuous green roof, providing food and agriculture experience to Vietnamese children, as well as a safe outdoor playground. The green roof is a triple-ring-shape drawn with a single stroke, creating three courtyards inside. While these internal courtyards provide safety and comfortable playgrounds for children, the roof makes landing to the courtyards at both sides, allowing children to enter a very special eco-friendly experience when they walk up and go through it. This green roof is designed as a continuous vegetable garden, a place to teach children the importance of agriculture and relationship with nature.
Architectural and mechanical energy-saving methods are comprehensively applied including but not limited to: green roof, PC-concrete louver for shading, recycle materials, water recycling, solar water heating and so on. These devices are designed visibly for children to play their important role in sustainable education.
The building is now under construction and expected to start its operation in September 2013.