The Clever Use of Kindergarten Roof Space:This Design is Beloved by Children

When talking about the kindergarten outdoor playground, many people will automatically think of the outdoor courtyard. However, have you discovered anything in the kindergarten? In today’s kindergarten design, more and more kindergartens begin to utilize the roof space to be a roof garden or a game space, and children can fully contact nature and understand life. A kindergarten whether it has a broad and abundant outdoor activity space is one of the factors for parents to choose a kindergarten. But it is wrong that all kindergarten roof space is suitable to be a game venue, it has a lot of detailed questions that require the designer to make a comprehensive consideration and alternate.

Confirming the Characteristics of the Roof

If you want to utilize the roof space of the kindergarten building, you must first determine whether it is a roof that allows people to board. There are two intuitionistic ways to make a preliminary judgment.

Whether the building itself has a staircase to the roof；

Whether the roof parapet or the top of the guardrail is more than 1.3 meters away from the finished surface of the roof floor. But it finally needs to make a confirmation according to the structural drawings of the building.

Understanding the Roof Structure

When using the roof site, the common functional construction such as air vents of the roof, light wells, and pipes need to be wrapped or enclosed with soft materials.

If the roof has a regular shape, it can be considered to be an open game venue; If the roof has an irregular shape and diversified layout planning, it can embed various game activities in a small area, or make it a little garden, which can nourish the childhood of children by natural environment.

The Functional Form of the Roof

The roof space of the kindergarten can be made into an open sports area, planting area, art creation area, scientific exploration area, view borrowing area, upper and lower connected area, and so on.

 Open Sport Area

This functional form of the open sports area is suitable for a smooth and flat roof, but if you want to install large-scale amusement facilities, you still need to consider the load-bearing problem of the building structure. In addition, the ground should adopt soft materials with cushioning properties, skid resistance, and good weather resistance, and the common materials are plastic ground, artificial lawn ground(Filled plastic particles), and PVC outdoor ground.

When this venue carries out ball games and throwing games, the sound absorption and sound insulation of the floor must be done. If the venue has a parapet, it must increase a high fence to prevent the objects from dropping the roof. (PS: It is not recommended that too many ball games and throwing games are set on the roof.)

Planting Area

When using the roof for soil cover planting, it is necessary to re-check the load of the building structure and determine the thickness of soil cover of the roof can withstand. Furthermore, the planting area requires a barrier to prevent the piercing of plant roots and separate waterproof layers.

Considering the architectural status of the old building, it is not recommended to do soil cover planting on the roof of the old building, and the plants can be planted with mobile planting boxes to flexibly and effectively use the roof space. The material of the ground has to consider characteristics of fast drainage and easy cleaning, therefore, the common materials are the stone floor and concrete floor. If the wood floor is set, the hydrophobic layer must be done under the bearing bed.

Art Creation Area

By utilizing the wall body of the building’s parapet and other structural facades as the carrier of the graffiti creation, the floor of the art creation area can also be treated as the graffiti ground and the material can use grey machine-cut stone, concrete, or cement mortar floor (surface finish). Besides, the concrete or cement mortar floor requires to apply special sealing waterproof protectant on the surface.

The graffiti area on the ground shall be drained separately and the height of the finished surface should be lower than the finished surface of the surrounding roof, so as to avoid the washed sewage polluting other areas. Moreover, when the ground is looking for a slope, the final solution should be to facilitate the collection and discharge of sewage after cleaning.

Scientific Exploration Area

According to the conditions of the roof, the area that is easy to collect the rainwater can set a rainwater collection as the water exploration game scene support. At the same time, the location with good lighting conditions can be the light and shadow game area. Additionally, on the basis of roof conditions can conduct many types of scientific exploration activities about perceiving the weather.

View Borrowing Area

Since the view of the kindergarten roof is the broadest, children can often see far away from the surroundings from the roof. Meanwhile, they either see the city where they are living or see the scenery near the kindergarten. Therefore, if the condition permits, the roof design can consider using the method of view borrowing.

However, the precondition of the view borrowing is that the secure and transparent guardrail must be designed to ensure the safety of children and allow children to see different view on the roof.

Upper and Lower Connected Area

Based on the site conditions of the building, the roof and ground space can be connected by multiple climbing and other ways of up and down to break down the space concept of absolute separation of upper and lower layers. There are some problems brought by the special location of the roof: Long time exposure to sunlight, the impact of rainy weather, etc. All these factors will bring children some use problems, so no matter what kind of roof design, we should make a comprehensive consideration to arrange some sunshade devices, rainproof space, etc.

Kindergarten roof design is the same as the kindergarten courtyard design,and they are both based on the space condition, kindergarten concept, and kindergarten course of each kindergarten itself to make a comprehensive consideration. In addition, the roof is the nearest outdoor space to the kindergarten's top floor. When we design the functions of the roof, we can think more about what kinds of game space of routine activity can we provide for kids.