The Stenjevac Daycare Center is a project with a distinct strong identity and exciting spaciousness, in which common spaces are carefully articulated as places of gathering, intergenerational learning and exchange of experience. The spatial value of the daycare center arise from a deft management of the harmonized relations of scale – the space is designed in line with a children’s scale, as well as children’s capacities and requirements, but at the same time allows for a comfortable working space for the teachers.

The children stay in the center in contrasting rooms that differ in their dimensions, number of students and activities. They are part of one organism, but are clearly separated and additionally articulated through the materials used, lighting and dimensions. By moving through the space, the children experience new moments of the center, observing scenes of the center’s staff working. In this sense, the kitchen separated from the hallway by a glass wall, just like the rooms of the educators and health care professionals, becomes an educational moment as the children walk through the center. The communications are designed as plazas, where children from different groups can gather and engage in various activities.

The linear organization of the structure has been fragmented by a meandering envelope that represents the functional division between the nursery in the northern part of the lot and the kindergarten in the south, as well as between the individual units. The contemporary solution devised for the premises strives for a modularity of all elements and prefabrication, economical in construction and maintenance. The prefabricated elements are offered in two basic types of semicircular walls that are equal in their dimensions. The way these are positioned determines the difference in how the space is materialized.