Day care nursery
The site is located in the middle of one of the most underdeveloped and segregated districts in Budapest - both in social and economic terms - where these urban conditions emphasize even more the indispensability of basic social services. The extended program - as part of a special urban regeneration process - works under the organization “Safe Starting” which provides a wide range of support for disadvantaged and unemployed local minorities, especially helping young mothers and women to obtain work.
It can be claimed that the only available plot owned by the municipality in the surroundings is basically unsuitable for establishing a day-nursery on it - even though it was formerly occupied by a fairly run-down kindergarten building. The main architectural challenge undoubtedly was to define a displacement for the program which, despite all the inconveniences, still reacts to the complex and general functional needs and besides to the disturbing urban environment. Consisting basically of three double-room units the building pushes itself against the void between the huge firewalls leaving as much free space as possible for the sheltered green play ground. Then the light is shuffled into the solid building mass with the help of reflective white vertical surfaces and through transom-windows and light-wells.
