Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Kindergarten at Henninger Park created by Claudia Meixner and Florian Schlüter of Meixner-Schlüter-Wendt Architekten, for Actris, is a new-build childcare center for play and learning in Frankfurt’s Sachsenhäuser Berg district.
Kindergarten at Henninger Park has been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Complementing the neighborhood shopping center in the building at the high-rise’s base, the childcare center livens up the new shared heart of the Henninger district, which boasts almost 1000 apartments.
The project structures the building into folded topographical layers, to form different scenarios for play and learning both inside and outside.
The roof layer encompasses two thermically enveloped levels, offering the potential for conventional use such as group rooms and workshops alongside space for open communication and play across different room layouts and heights.
Below, a central indoor access area and covered walkways with concrete staircases create a flow between inside and outside.
These spatial transitions face southwards, towards the large garden.
At the same time, the projecting arcades offer weather protection, allowing children and carers to go out into the fresh air without being exposed to adverse or overly hot conditions.
Directly adjoining these and flooded with sunlight are the bright group rooms for the children, while the administrative rooms sit along the north side of the building.
Everything becomes a playzone!
A central indoor access area and the variously designed covered walkways are especially suitable for moving around.
The covered walkways with their access staircases made of fair-faced concrete represent a particularly successful transition between the inside and the outside. These spatial transitions face southwards, towards the large garden.
At the same time, the projecting arcades offer protection from direct sunlight, thus preventing the building from heating up excessively. It also makes it possible to go out into the fresh air without being exposed to the rain when the weather is bad.
Directly adjoining these and flooded with sunlight are the bright group rooms for the children. The administrative rooms are arranged along the north side of the building.
The building has been designed as a simple concrete construction – the folded layers, walls, supports and staircases have been left untreated and can be interpreted as elements of the constructional structure.
Depending on the functional requirement, layers of acoustic panels, wall covering, tiles, or built-in furniture are added to the walls and ceilings.
The color and material concept works with the tense relationship between the rough fair-faced concrete and the splashes of color represented by these additional elements.
The layers of fair-faced concrete are also a striking design element in the façade.
Between the layers are solid slabs of high-insulation material with a greenish-gray plaster surface and there are floor-to-ceiling window elements.
On the north side facing the promenade, the building seems more closed – only the fully glazed play area on the ground floor can be looked in on.
By contrast, on the south side, all the rooms are generously glazed and look out onto the park. The balconies and the arcades have a safety barrier in the form of stainless-steel netting.
In concrete terms, the building features two main stories plus a roof story. It provides rooms for three groups of toddlers (0-3 years), three kindergarten groups (3-6 years), and two children’s groups (6-10 years) and can take about 142 children in all.
Project: Kindergarten at Henninger Park
Architects: Meixner-Schüluter-Wendt Architekten
Lead Architects: Claudia Meixner and Florian Schlüter
Design Team: Georg Kratzenstein, Fernando Caballero, Emanuel Gießen, Sabine Hertel, Philipp Schams, and Dorothée Wilhelmiv
General Contractor: Streib GmbH
Client: Actris GmbH
Photographers: Christoph Kraneburg, Norbert Miguletz, and Lili Zwirner
