Beijing Home Box

Raising a happy, healthy, hopeful child requires the joint effort of families, teachers, business people and community leaders. Family Box is both an indoor playground and a kindergarten for children up to twelve, adaptable to parents' needs. It supports swimming, games, and courses from music and dance to crafts and cooking, alongside large play, reading and dining areas, with a distinctive presence at the edge of an outdoor park. The different scales and viewpoints of adults and children are the starting point: the project contains two spatial scales, child-scale and parent-scale, and the challenge is balancing and combining them. Beyond complex functions, another challenge was working within the existing structure, column grid and facade, given earlier partial design by another institute. The heavy concrete exterior looked mismatched to the intended function, but because the upper two floors were unbuilt, floor slabs were adjusted to allow visual communication between levels. Independent boxes within rooms allow simultaneous different activities while providing comfortable spaces; each room has its own theme and offers different outdoor spatial qualities.