Ingeborg Pohl Kinderoase an der TUM | Kéré Architecture

Located in the middle of TUM’s dense urban campus, the kindergarten will allow students’ children to be cared for in a high-quality environment. From the end of 2025, there will be space for 60 children with 700 square meters at their disposal. Kéré Architecture has designed the building’s entire interior, where children will find a series of spaces of various scales designed to spark creativity. Several floors are connected by slides, and the façade of the building highlights the playful energy of children.

Thomas Hofmann, President of TUM: “Something really great is being built here.”

The building will contain five floors, with administration on the ground level. Children‘s facilities are grouped by age across the middle three stories. The top floor is a covered roof terrace where the children can play and enjoy the sheltered outdoor space, with panoramic views across Munich. This outdoor play area will be called Himmelswiese, German for “field of the heavens”.

Francis Kéré: “When we build for the little ones, we want them to be able to run around outside and feel the elements. I would also like to colonize the neighboring roofs, starting by connecting our building with the roof of the cafeteria and turning that into a giant meadow.”

The new building within the TUM campus will be built mostly with timber, taking into account local norms and standards for energy efficiency, thermal comfort, fire protection and acoustics. This is aimed at minimizing the building’s carbon footprint while maintaining simple and high-quality construction in line with the philosophy of Kéré Architecture. The studio is collaborating with Austrian firm Hermann Kaufmann + Partner, who are experts in wood construction.

Francis Kéré: “We wanted to take the sustainability of the building to the extreme and build it entirely out of wood.”