Songpa Wirye Kindergarten 

Project conditions are unsatisfactory - SongpaWirye Kindergarten is an independent public kindergarten built simultaneously with the construction of a new city. Kindergartens are legally considered urban planning facilities, and their location and size are determined at the time of planning the new city. However, in a new city focused on providing a large number of housing stock, a small public educational facility for infants and toddlers seems to have been neglected. The site was located in the gap between Deoksu High School, which was relocated from Gangbuk, and a large-scale residential complex, and had several conditions that made it difficult to create a desirable project from its inception.

The site is located where there is no physical or visual connection to the central green links of the new city, although they are close by.
The site faces a 27-metre-wide road, but the short width of the site makes it difficult to separate the parking entrance from the student entrance.
The entrance to the apartment building's underground car park, through which hundreds of vehicles enter and exit, is located directly on the eastern side of the site, making it difficult to ensure the safety of children.
The site is very small for the size of the facility and has severe variations in level from south to north, making it difficult to achieve the required level conditions, including BF
Due to the size of the building mass, it is impossible to organize a suitable outdoor space, including a children's playground, due to the need to meet the plot coverage ratio.
The dense arrangement of residential buildings over 30 storeys on the south and east sides of the site makes it very unsuitable for views and lighting conditions.
With the above unfavorable conditions, the design of SongpaWirye kindergarten is an attempt to overcome them.

Safe but interesting space - According to ChatGPT, “The most important thing in planning a kindergarten is to provide a physically and emotionally safe space. The required area, which can only be met by approximately filling the plot coverage ratio and floor area ratio inevitably leads to a square-shaped building block In addition, the area unit plan set the building limit at 3 meters along the front road, making it difficult to find alternatives for the placement of the main building. Securing physical safety was the most important consideration in the design process, as the entrance for kindergarten students had to be located on The front road, and the slope of the site was inclined towards the road, so the image of innocent children streaming down the driveway as soon as the front door opened after the kindergarten kept coming to my mind, and to prevent this ridiculous fantasy from becoming a reality, the building was built as far north as possible To create a space of about 8 meters surrounded by a non-load-bearing wall with openings of different shapes.This seemingly unnecessary architectural proposal ended up solving many problems and bringing many important values to the building.

By integrating the front enclosure with the exterior walls of the building, the entire block becomes a porous box and forms an unusual and interesting facade along the front street. This prominent facade is interesting to look at from the outside, enhances the depth and permeability of the space, and provides a variety of visual frames from the inside out. The shifting shadows and saturated interior colors, which change with the movement of the sun, arouse the curiosity of children and adults alike. Since the preschool opened, I have seen it referred to as the “Jerry Cheese Building” by the local SNS community. The children would refer to the building as the cheese that Jerry enjoyed eating at Tom and Jerry. It's a bit of a silly name for a public education building, but it's also a sign of the strong and familiar presence of kindergartens in the community.

Encountering the Unfamiliar - Martin Heidegger once said: “The mind begins from the encounter with the unfamiliar.” This means that familiar things are not easy to analyze and understand. Children have flexible imaginations that are not yet fixed, so providing unstructured spaces is essential to enhance their creativity. Just as one child might see clouds and think of cotton candy, another might think of a house cat or a rabbit, the unfamiliar and diverse shapes created by the overlapping and overlapping arched openings are enough to arouse curiosity. Each child will remember and associate a unique scene or thing. Curiosity to know what it's all about sparks a reason to want to know.

Once you enter, you have another experience where you can see the same shapes from different heights and perspectives. Frames created by openings of different shapes, false walls, beams, etc. cut up the dull landscape of the new city and provide interesting scenes with the changing lights and seasons. They invite us to observe and imagine closely. Perhaps this is why the first architects and landscape architects created picturesque windows. By simply looking through these frames of different sizes and shapes, a clear connection is created between the observer and the objects outside – the city and nature.