January 11, 2016
Photo by Edmund Sumner
How dreamy is this Japanese day care designed by architect Junya Ishigami? The renowned minimalist architect transformed a former cafeteria in a mixed-use high rise into an imagination inspiring space using curving cloud-shaped concrete walls. Ishigami says of the project, “I like to look at the clouds. Clouds change their form at will, with a certain rationality. Moreover, they are all white and fluffy, having both a sense of unity and some consistency. And they are vast. There are crevices that only children can pass through, and absent spaces that are considered large even for adults – it is a space that softly ties in various objects and scales." The partitions create a functional playground and educational space that references both earth and sky and elegantly incorporates the space’s industrial elements. We dig it.