city for kids
Instead of increasing size and uniformity, downscaling and diversity become essential tools for creating a good environment for kids in day care.
Copenhagen is growing and so is the demand for new facilities to accomondate the growing population of children. How do we ensure welfare for the next generation without creating large day care factories?
The site is a triangular plot wedged in between the freetown Christiania to the South, the urban blocks of Christianshavn to the west and Aresenaløen and the canal to the east.
Copenhagen is characterized by many different neighbouhoods with special buildings that carry a particular history or functional purpose.
Kids’ City Christianshavn is too large to conceive of as a single building. Instead, why not consider it in similar terms as Copenhagen with different neighborhoods for different age groups?
From drawing to reality.
Copenhagen is made up of many neighbourhoods, each with special buildings that carry a particular history or meaning. These buildings provide the different areas with character and atmosphere. In the same way, Kids’ City Christianshavn has been designed to reflect the city’s architectural diversity.
Dan Stubbergaard, architect and founder, Cobe
to kids’ city
Kids’ City Christianshavn’s next door neighbor is the self-sustaining community of Christiania. A world-famous and notorious social experiment and free city with a self-grown and playful architecture.
The Fire Station
The Town Hall
The Restaurant
The City Gate
The Tower
The Parking Garage
The Factory
The Beach Hotel
Kids’ City Christianshavn has all the iconic elements of an actual city, scaled down to kids’ size, providing the different areas with character and atmosphere.
The Restaurant is where kids meet and do lunch. Directly connected to the kitchen, kids help the chef make sandwiches and slice cucumbers. The top floor is a greenhouse.
The Fire Station is of course bright red. Being a unifying playscape, small kids have access to the ground floor, and bigger kids have access to the top. The Fire Station also works as a garage for moon cars.
The Town Hall is where everyone can meet and perform a musical or have a Christmas party. On summer days, all doors open to face a wooden deck in the sun. The roof is covered in approximately 200m² integrated solarpanels.
Facing the street, The golden City Gate spans between two buildings. While creating a covered urban space beneath, the city gate and ball cage also pays homage to another famous gate in the neighborhood, namely the entrance to the neighboring freetown, Christiania.
The Kids’ City hosts an after school club, where school children spend their afternoons.
different communities
The different neighborhoods in Copenhagen all have different types of citizens with different sets of preferences. Similarly, the Kids’ City Christianshavn addresses different groups with different needs: infants, preschool children, and school children as well as young people.
Incorporating variety and diversity in both indoor and outdoor spaces is absolutely essential when designing for such a mix of ages, needs, and personalities. Spaces vary in both scale and content, with both small, secure, and intimate spaces as well as big and challenging areas.
As the children grow, they move between the different neighborhoods in the daycare facility. The idea is that the physical and visual contact between the different age groups will strengthen the overall sense of community by smoothing the transitions between the “neighbourhoods” in the “city”.
The central plaza with the fire station for moon car parking, the construction site with play machinery, the chalk façade where kids can draw. That is the heart of Kids’ City.
The City Hall for kids is a common space for events like the annual Christmas tree party, Halloween, and in every day life where kids of different ages meet.
Double high spaces create spatial variation, and make it possible for children of different age groups to connect and interact during the day.
