The Children's Cultural Center, built in the Amager district, is designed for visitors aged 0-18. This is not a kindergarten or a school, but a leisure center in which both children and adolescents can find something to their liking.
For the construction of the center, a very small plot was allocated overlooking the intersection. In fact, the new building closed the outer perimeter of the courtyard of two residential buildings, organizing the corner of the quarter in a fundamentally different way.
It is clear that with such an arrangement, one of the most important tasks of the designers was to maintain the level of insolation in neighboring residential buildings. It is this that largely explains the complex configuration of the volume of the children's center: its two wings continue the shape of the buildings to which they adjoin, but due to the sloping roofs they "lose" their height as they approach the intersection. This technique allows you to significantly underestimate the corner part of the new volume and, thereby, let the maximum sun rays into the courtyard and the windows of the apartments coming out into it.
The facades and roof of the orphanage are faced with the same steel panels, which creates the illusion that the building has no “beginning” and “end”: it seems that this is a fragment of the Mobius strip that accidentally fell into the traditional building of the quarter. The uniformity of surfaces is also emphasized with the help of similarly designed windows: square openings in wide wooden frames face both streets and the sky. All of them are located at different heights, giving out the originality of the internal structure of the building.
The interior of the children's center really does not resemble traditional institutions of this type: there are no usual classrooms or isolated playrooms. All rooms are connected in one way or another, offering visitors a wide variety of spaces. There are all kinds of workshops here, and a theater studio, and a dance hall, and a cafe, and nooks for relaxation, and even an impressive climbing wall. The appearance of the latter, according to the architects, is more than natural: in accordance with its shape, the two wings of the center are interpreted as mountain slopes that even the smallest visitors can conquer.
