Daycare Center Omenapuisto

The Omenapuisto day-care centre is designed on a narrow site and follows the adjoining street pattern. The southern part of the site is reserved as a play area which the group rooms and corridors open on to. The aim is to achieve lightness and openness coupled with the necessary degree of supervision.

The wooden-framed building is predominantly single storey, but at the point where the building becomes two storeys high, there is a double-height multi-purpose space with a balcony and ventilation plant room.

The roof slopes gently in two directions. At each end is a large gutter which throws rainwater into a stone-paved pool from whence it soaks into the ground. The natural changes of level within the site are utilised for slides and climbing slopes.

The long elevations are clad in 42-mm-thick Kuningaspaneeli cladding. These wide cladding boards are cut in three different widths from glulam beams and then planed smooth. The boards are treated with preservative at the factory. The cladding is left in its natural colour so it will turn grey in the course of time. The white patterns on the cladding were painted on site.

The cladding was delivered to site in specific lengths to avoid joints in the vertical boards. Fixing is by concealed plywood fasteners located in the ventilation gap behind the boards. The facades meet the most demanding criteria for durability: good-quality timber, adequate thickness, minimum movement and an unbroken surface.

The building is in Fire Class P3, which has made it possible to use timber extensively for partitions. The long elevations are clad internally with Effex pine boarding. The internal cladding is in boards of three different widths, like the external cladding, and is also fixed with concealed fasteners and has no horizontal joints. The same boarding is used as a veneer on the furniture. Some of the internal walls are clad in good-quality, planed pine boarding treated with a clear oily wax.

The paved internal courtyard opening onto the foyer has a ceiling with a large circular opening which allows the movement of the sun to be a part of the courtyard. In the courtyard, there is a sculpture by the artist Pasi Karjula representing the Universe, which consists of twenty spheres made of larch wood.