Ravuri Daycare Centre

This small, wood-framed daycare centre follows the site’s natural contours and organizes each group around a simple, skylit home area.

View from the yard
Simo Rista / MFA

Ravuri daycare centre is a smaller daycare unit in the Hakunila area.

The site is a north-facing slope wooded with beautiful birches. The building is made to hug the contours and has displaced very few trees. The centre comprises various units of a similar shape, each containing the facilities for one group, i.e. its ‘home area’, staff rooms and joint areas.

The shape of the home area is simple: it is the space covered by a single hipped roof, with various rooms set around an entrance hall lit by a south-facing skylight. Internal connections within the building are via these entrance halls.

The centre has a wooden frame, with the painted board as the external cladding.

Ravuri daycare centre was designed by architects Kirsti and Egil Nordin. Kirsti Nordin was an important force in the early stage of the public daycare in Finland. In the 1970s she worked at the National Board of Social Welfare developing standardisation of public daycare centres. Ravuri daycare centre is an example of Nordin’s design ideas in practice.

Source: Finnish Architectural Review 8/1984

Location

Kaviokuja 7, Vantaa

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More projects by Kirsti and Egil Nordin Architects