Graduation projects
Kindergarten and greenhouse
Project description
Impressions at preschool age have a significant impact on the development of our personality and thus on our lives. Today, we not only need to address sustainability and the environment, but we need to make important changes. It is essential to become acquainted with the importance of nature as a child. Plants not only have a positive effect on our environment physically: we can be more productive, more creative, more stress-free from their presence. It also increases children’s sense of responsibility to grow a small plant of their own. Therefore, I supplement the kindergarten function with a greenhouse. The kindergarten has three group rooms and can accommodate 60 children. In addition, the outdoor hall, together with its outdoor expandability, provides an opportunity to sell the fruits of plants grown by children in occasional markets. The location is in the 3rd district of Budapest, in the suburbs of Harsánylejtő. The housing estate has been developing rapidly for years. However, this large-scale development cannot be accommodated by the capacity of the current small number of kindergartens in the area. A total of 2985 m2 and 35% of the plot, 1050 m2 of floor space (including the greenhouse) will be built. The three units of functions are the kindergarten rooms, the employers, and the greenhouse, which are arranged one after the other in the floor plan division. From this structure, however, the greenhouse emerges as it meets the group rooms - influencing them, it connects organically to the nursery spaces. Where this allows us to feel that this garden surrounds us. The triple segmentation also appears in the crowd. The three functional units have the same pitched roof design, but with a decreasing ceiling height. In this way, a two-storey mass can be created for the kindergarten-functional spaces, while a gallery can be created above the group rooms. And the declining ceiling height of the greenhouse provides an opportunity to grow both taller and lower crops. The combination of the two functions has a positive effect not only on the environmental and psychological effects but also on building services. Plants living in a greenhouse provide better quality air due to their ability to clean the air, in addition to the fact that the air present there is already preheated. The fresh air in the kindergartens is ventilated from the greenhouse, and all group rooms open to the greenhouse.
Author's presentation text
I am Edit Somogyi, 25 years old, and I graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics this year. Already in my third year, I started working alongside my studies to gain as much practical knowledge as possible. Before graduating, I spent half year in Munich and studied at the Technical University of Munich, and from there I traveled to Switzerland, where I worked for half year in an architectural firm, where I can continue my career as an architect in the future. For me, one of the most exciting parts of practicing architecture is experimenting: making a new, even so far unknown statement / question and looking for the answer to it. And with that, as an architect, we have the power to influence and change the way people live their live. That was my goal when I chose my diploma topic - to reform a system that has not been changed for decades.
