Balancing family and work is a real challenge, particularly for hospital staff. This makes reliable childcare – which can be flexibly adapted to shift work and workload – all the more important. With its in-house all-day childcare centre for 60 children aged 0 to 6, Stuttgart Hospital is helping to create family-friendly working conditions. In doing so, it is also enhancing its appeal as an employer. New staff accommodation is also planned for the future. With its extensive green roof, the angular new building by Coast Office Architects blends gently into the hillside and forms a natural continuation of the adjacent, vegetated Galgenberg. Geothermal energy is used for heating in winter and for cooling in summer. The additional photovoltaic system installed helps the nursery building meet the plus-energy standard: more energy is generated than can be consumed. The single-storey, accessible building is enveloped by a playfully designed timber façade, which immediately reveals that the interior is a colourful and lively place. And this is the case all year round, from 5.45 am until 6 pm. Despite their diversity and colourfulness, the interior spaces are, above all, clearly laid out and well-structured. Whilst the functional rooms are arranged towards the slope, the children’s group rooms face the outdoor play area, which covers around 500 m². Alongside the mud run with a clean-up zone, there are several themed rooms where children can explore and experiment, develop their senses, build things and take on different roles. The dining hall and a multi-purpose room are centrally integrated into the layout. At either end of the building, which covers approximately 900 m², are the sleeping rooms allocated to the respective groups. Functional and communal areas are linked by the play corridor, which runs through the building and, through carefully designed narrowings and widenings, creates space for socialising, movement and a change of perspective. Here you’ll find the parents’ café as well as small learning stations with tablets and information screens to support educational activities. Vibrant colours provide visual anchors: either as purple inlays that lead to the cloakrooms in the form of geometric shapes, or as polygons extending across the floor, walls and ceiling, bathed in bright yellow, pink, orange, blue, red or green. Depending on the viewer’s perspective and pace of movement, these colour islands shift and coalesce into a unique visual image. They also aid spatial orientation. As spaces within a space, they also mark the entrances to the group rooms. Here, individual accents in carpets, textiles and play elements echo the overarching colour scheme, which is also reflected as a dynamic structure in the wooden façade.

www.coastoffice.de

Photography Credits:

David Franck
www.davidfranck.de

(Published in CUBE Stuttgart 01|22)