Each of us probably remembers the building of the kindergarten we once attended. What often comes back, rather than specific recollections, are the sensations and impressions associated with that place. For me, it’s the garden with its quiet corner under the trees, where new friendships were formed; the lockers in the dimly lit corridor that marked the start of every school day; or the soft carpet, onto which I once accidentally spilled an entire bowl of soup. As you begin reading this issue, I invite you to try this exercise, too: what spatial memories come to your mind?

The results of the 10th annual Czech Architecture Award (ČCA) competition, organized by the Czech Chamber of Architects (ČKA), were announced at a gala event held on November 13 at Forum Karlín in Prague. The main prize was awarded to Tomáš Págo, Milan Joja, and Karel Kubza from the ČTYŘSTĚN studio and landscape architect Marek Holán for their design of the children’s hospice Dům pro Julii (House for Julia) (see ERA21 #05/2024).

On the edge of Horní Jirčany, a new complex of buildings embodies a bold vision—to combine a retirement home with a kindergarten. The most challenging aspect of the design was fitting the required capacities on the site, while still maintaining a relatively small scale in keeping with the surrounding development. The complex is divided into three main volumes: two serve as assisted living apartments, and one houses the kindergarten. The apartment buildings, connected by a glazed corridor topped with a green roof, form an acoustic barrier shielding an inner garden, which serves as a shared outdoor space for both facilities. The apartment buildings are divided into smaller formal units with individual roofs that help reduce their overall scale. The kindergarten, containing a single classroom and a small community room, is placed close to a nearby forest and follows the same architectural language established by the retirement home.

The KinderKunstLabor in Altoonapark, St. Pölten is a meeting place for children and contemporary art. A child’s perspective is the main cornerstone of the program. The building is conceived as both an exhibition space and a laboratory for experimentation—an inspiring space for play, meetings, and events. Spatially, it is designed to support open and participatory processes—an architecture that allows the diverse personalities of its young audience to flourish. Children can move and play freely both indoors and outdoors.

Can well-designed spaces foster childhood development? In Germany, the team members of the Berlin-based architectural office Baukind are pioneers in the design of creative environments for children to play, learn, and grow. Their projects include new buildings and conversions that show how space and design can serve as functional pedagogical building blocks.

The typology of kindergartens, nurseries, and childcare facilities carries its own specific demands. When designing such spaces, architects must consider not only the healthy development of the young users for whom these buildings are intended, but also the strict hygiene and safety standards set by Czech legislation. We spoke with architect Helena Hexnerová, who focuses on the kindergarten typology both in her research and professional practice, to explore the broader context of this issue.

The new Hvězdička Kindergarten in Šlapanice is located on a small corner plot formerly occupied by a local grocery store. Fitting two classrooms, staff facilities, and a sufficiently spacious garden into the limited space was a real challenge. Despite the original design brief requiring a two-story layout, the architects proposed an efficient single-story solution with both classrooms on the ground floor and a central cloakroom that doubles as the main circulation space for the entire building. Outdoor terraces serve as extensions of the compact classrooms, allowing children to use the front garden and part of the play area without changing shoes in good weather. An additional outdoor classroom with raised planting beds has been created on the roof, accessible from the upstairs common room or via a spiral staircase directly from the garden.

The kindergarten in Fulnek is located in the northern part of its site, surrounded by a spacious garden. Making use of the sloping terrain, the building opens along its entire southern façade toward the surrounding natural landscape and offers picturesque views of the château on the opposite hill. The kindergarten’s two-story structure is designed so that each classroom has direct contact with the garden. Its elongated form is functionally divided into areas for children and service areas. The interior spaces are connected horizontally by a corridor and vertically by a central staircase hall. Inside the classrooms, space is treated as a kind of construction set—a flexible layout divided into activity zones. The interior design concept revolves around the motif of the square, which is applied in various forms and scales, from ceiling ribs and window frames to acoustic panels, modular box furniture, and mobile storage units. Each classroom is defined by a specific color for the better orientation.

On the eastern edge of Humpolec, a new kindergarten has been built in a park surrounded by apartment buildings and family houses. The massing of the white, flat-roofed structure was shaped by the trees growing on the site—the building is set back several times to avoid root systems of mature trees so that none had to be cut down. The classrooms have windows facing three cardinal directions and enjoy immediate contact with the garden, which gradually merges into the sloping terrain and becomes one of the outdoor play elements.

The forest kindergarten in Prague’s Žižkov district is a small but significant intervention that transforms a neglected urban area into an integrated environmental and educational system. Three modular wooden pavilions with green roofs surround a sheltered outdoor space, while open garden sequences encourage multisensory learning, free exploration, and environmental literacy. The complex combines a self-sufficient architectural solution, the principles of forest pedagogy, and community participation—directly linking ecological, educational, and social dimensions within the urban landscape.

Education has always been a fundamental issue, but its importance becomes even more pronounced in the context of today’s overlapping crises. Since birth we are influenced by the environment we live in, and we actively shape this environment through construction. What kind of role do educational spaces play in this formative process? What significance does architecture have in shaping this?

Located centrally in the largest village of the Bregenzerwald region, the kindergarten’s pavilion structure reinterprets the traditional rural typology through a single-story wooden structure with prefabricated elements, establishing a coherent relationship between interior, exterior, and the surrounding landscape. The central “marketplace” and freely composed sequences of rooms encourage both social interaction and individual exploration. Variable ceiling heights, connections to outdoor alcoves, and materials with authentic textures create a multisensory environment that stimulates cognitive development and spatial orientation. Flexible public areas also integrate cultural and community functions into the building.

The architecture of the Egedammen kindergarten in the Copenhagen suburb of Gladsaxe is based on the principle of spatial phenomenology—the building is not defined by its floor plans, but by a sequence of distinct spaces that children can experience. The two-story layout, the gallery, double-height playrooms, and the attic under the concealed mansard roof create a variety of settings for movement, play, and visual connection between interior and exterior. Interior and exterior alcoves provide quiet retreat zones with views of the surroundings as well as other children. Color-differentiated rooms and natural surfaces enhance the perception of scale, light, material, and sound, forming an inclusive environment for sensory learning.

Located in the middle of a Soviet-era housing estate in northern Budapest, the renovated Gyöngyszem (Pearl) Kindergarten demonstrates that even a 1970s prefab structure can be transformed into a sustainable, energy-efficient, and playful building. A second-floor extension has been added on top of the original single-story structure, which was previously in a state of disrepair. The gaps between individual pavilions have been filled with double-height, gallery-style spaces that connect the sections both horizontally and vertically, providing space for community activities. In addition to ten group rooms, dedicated development and activity rooms support movement, creative projects, cooking, and individual or group skill development, furthering an educational approach focused on a healthy lifestyle.

Located on Estonia’s eastern border, in the predominantly Russian-speaking city of Narva, this kindergarten serves as a model for integrating early childhood education into a broader urban context—it is directly connected to a state gymnasium and a primary school. The project uses the historical perimeter block structure as a framework for creating spatial continuity between the institution, the park, and the city. The permeability of boundaries between the courtyard and the park combine with the modular furniture detailing to create an inclusive environment that encourages movement and creativity. The subdivision of the mass into smaller units helps to refine the overall scale, while the central courtyard functions as a key organizational and pedagogical element—dissolving the threshold between interior and exterior space and reinforcing learning and social interaction.

The relevance of exploring how contemporary formative spaces for early childhood education should be designed is illustrated, among other things, by last year’s semester project at the Miroslav Šik School of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Rather than focusing on the rehabilitation of the preschool program itself, the work concentrates on integrating the existing architecture and vegetation, seeking solutions through the juxtaposition of seemingly incompatible functions. The spatial composition transcends the boundaries of the interior, with proposals extending into the surrounding terrain, which has been conceptualized in collaboration with fine art students as an imaginative, playfully educational environment.