The project was commissioned by Julia Gabriel Centre, a Singaporean company that creates and manages educational facilities in various Asian countries.
The conversion as a nursery of a former police station in the French Concession district in downtown Shanghai required special care to make the building’s spaces suitable for a use very different from the original one.
The entrance on the street was transformed and protected with a canopy that recalls Julia Gabriel Centre’s distinctive colors and graphic signs.
The three floors of the main building host six classrooms for children from 6 to 36 months, as well as a “library” and utility rooms.
A new steel staircase built in the central courtyard functions as an emergency exit and connects the terraces on the second floor and on the roof, redesigned as outdoor play spaces.
As a narrative and chromatic theme, the design of the interior and exterior spaces takes up the shapes and colors of the trunks and leaves of large plane trees, that are symbolic of the streets of the former French Concession district.