KATH
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Project Description
KATH is an innovative Nursery School built from renewable, reusable and recyclable materials with ample green spaces and purpose-built structures to provide a sense of warmth and responsibility. We believe that KATH’s students will grow up with a better understanding of the meaning of sustainability and have greater respect for both, one another, and the environment we live in. At KATH we are not only worried about the World we leave for our children, but also the children we leave for the world
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Description of the project
Summary
KATH (Kids AT Home), was born in 2020 as a Nursery School for kids up to 6 years old. The idea was to create a unique environment for kids to grow up in and help them learn some of the key aspects of the world we live in today through means other than a textbook. Together with this, we strongly believe that it is essential for kids to grow up with healthy nutrition habits, good interpersonal relationship skills, strong values and a sense of freedom and joy which so many times is forgotten at this age.
In this regard, the physical space to host all activities becomes crucial. KATH’s architecture proposes an ecological building that operates as a pedagogical tool to grow children within a three-dimensional space that incorporates all aspects of how building of the future ought to be. These include the use of renewable materials and clean energy technologies or incorporating diverse natural spaces — from more domesticated to wilder — within the architectural experience.
Another driver for the creation of KATH was the growing trend of ‘professionalization’ in the education sector as a whole, driven by institutional investment and over-ambitious expansion plans (both in number of kids per school and schools under one same ‘brand’ in a country/region). Very often this results in exceedingly distant care and homogeneous care of students.
KATH will be a small Nursery School of close to 60 kids in a unique environment and very personalised care where every single one of them is respected as an individual and looked after like he was at home. Of course, this also means bringing utmost importance to the inclusion of kids from different backgrounds, races and mental abilities.
Key objectives for sustainability
Objectives
· Teach future generations about the importance of ecological awareness] by raising them in an environment where they can live and breathe it in their everyday lives.
· Create a unique ecological space which sets an example and offers a healthy environment for young kids to grow up in.
· Set a precedent in the education sector to prove that environmental and social sustainability can coexist in a successful business endeavour.
· Build a Nursery School inside a city (proximity is key at such a young age) which is still able to provide for a sense of wilderness and a natural environment.
All of these would be met by creating a space where the architecture embraces true ecological principles:
(1) It is made out a renewable, forest-certified, locally sourced, carbon-storing material such as mass timber;
(2) It is prefabricated, easy and safe to build, and ‘designed for disassembly’ to maximize future growth, uses or relocations;
(3) It incorporates the necessary technologies to become as resource and energy self-sufficient as possible (through passive heating and cooling strategies, solar panels, small windmills, food production or rainwater harvesting);
(4) It hybridizes with nature (trees, plants, animals and the landscape) to offer diverse socio-environmental spaces for kids, from more domesticated to wilder.
Furthermore, the educational programme at KATH will ensure that all of these values are introduced so that the kid grows up taking them for granted rather than forcing them upon them.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Aesthetics are a key differentiating factor of the project. From natural elements built in and around the building itself to custom made furniture made to provide a sense of warmth and proximity.
KATH proposes to become an architectural and educational reference and therefore every aesthetic detail must be carefully looked after.
Early childhood education has a role in building sustainability because it promotes children's participation in its local design and helps them "develop an effective sense of participation in a community that allows it."
Kath wants to break away from the challenge for the education of children, as it requires rethinking some of the practices that still do not fit the vision of the child as a citizen. Rethinking early childhood education.
Key objectives for inclusion
Another of KATH’s primary goals is to ensure we provide an inclusive and responsible education model. Today we live in a global and diverse World so we feel it is crucial for our kids to grow up understanding the importance of inclusiveness. At KATH we will support vulnerable families – particularly those with kids at risk of social exclusion.
To do this, we will have a minimum number of spaces reserved for these families and design an educational programme which allows all these kids, with different abilities, to flourish and enjoy the time at Nursery School.
Innovative character
This project proposes several innovative ideas for education settings. The introduction of an ecological construction system based on industrialized mass timber. This system plays a key role in the green recovery of construction for Europe. While it is progressively more popular in northern countries, its use in Spain is still very incipient. For that reason, trigger projects such as KATH become particularly important in leading the way. Also, the incorporation of sustainable materials, landscapes and technologies to overcome inherited cultural barriers and instill a new culture for the built environment to children and their families. Teaching this ecological culture of environmental awareness to our youngest is an important strategy for unlocking ecologically meaningful change in the way we build today.
The project exposes kids to all these new spatial features resulting in an educational space as a hybrid of nature and architecture that exposes, rather and occludes, spaces of food, energy and nature production within the pedagogical space. Lastly, while there are many spatial configurations that can make sure of these innovations, KATH advances an innovative design composed of: open classrooms in dual connection with interior and exterior nature; interior and exterior educational flexible spaces; integrated roofscapes as playgrounds, greenhouses, topographies and treehouses; modular and prefabricated building arrangement anticipating future transformations and growth; naturally illuminated spaces made out of wood; or a design organization following sun orientation to maximize passive climatic strategies.
