The ’Mesevonat’ nursery finished in March 2016 provides activities in four group rooms for 48 toddlers in the Zuglo District of Budapest. The institution employs 20 staff and provides additional services, e.g. day-care on a daily basis for job-seekers.
The surrounding residential area with workshops and empty plots has a mismatching urban structure. The architects of the building choose an unusual strategy and they formed the building as a landscape object with a slightly sloping green roof.
The building has a U-shape with a miniature cour d’honneur-style entrance garden, which is a meeting place for the parents. That is in direct connection to a spatious lobby accommodating the space of the changing areas, as well.
The group-rooms of the nursery are facing the terrace and the play-ground garden orientated towards South-East. This is the most tranquil part of the plot bordered by a quiet residential street.
The wing parallell to the main street, Öv utca hosts a group-room for temporary day-care, a room for movement therapy, a nurse’s room, a ”salt cave” and offices. The service wing on the opposite side of the plot includes a 120-portion industrial kichen, a laundry, storages and a workshop.
The main rooms have big windows with low window sills that makes group rooms bright, and allows the toddlers to observe the outside world. The bath-rooms and the corridors are supplied with natural light through sun tunnels. The sloping roof creates bigger heights in the interior towards the terrace that enabled the use of additional high windows which supply the inner parts of the group-rooms with natural light. At the same time, the architects could design ball-shaped lights hanging in different heights.
Most of the surfaces are designed with white or pale ground colors, which is supplemeted with colored surfaces, furniture or tiles. The most vivid facade is the one towards the terrace, where the colored fibre cement patterns of the facade are facing the textile sunshades in various colours.
The building has a relatively compact shape, and it was designed with renewable energy sources. This nursery is the first public building built by the local government with a green roof in the district.