Family Box Beijing | Crossboundaries

Family Box is something between an indoor playground and a kindergarten for children up to twelve years old, but it also accomodates their parents’ needs. It hosts different kinds of activities - from swimming, playing games to various classes ranging from music, dancing, crafting to cooking. Furthermore it has a big playframe, a reading area and a generous café area. Located at the outer corner of a park it is placed in a natural environment, which enhances the visibility of the building.

Despite the complex program another challenging part of this project was to deal with an existing structural system, column grid and also the building footprint.
Major design elements are shifting up and down floorplates and cut outs in the floor to allow views between the first and second floor.
The use of independent rooms in the shape of freestanding boxes allows the activities to run parallel and it offers the most suitable environment for each. The rooms have their own program or theme, they all differ from the outside space in terms of color and furniture.

The box locations are meant to break the rigid layout of the concrete columns, which is also camouflaged with a series of arches that give a different rhythm to the environment. 
Visually, the common areas are treated with low contrast finishes in order to enhance and balance the space and equipments for the children.

The glass façade is wrapping all of the functions like a skin, following the given building perimeter. It has a printed pattern, which was developed out of simple single-line drawings made by children. They were modified into a pattern, the graphic motif is reversed: the background is white-translucent and the drawing is transparent. From far away the objects on the facade are recognizable; they indicate a building function related to children, fun and recreation.