Project SheetAdieu Tristesse!

Municipal day-care centre Tunzhofer Straße, Stuttgart

Project Panel

A strong image, a metaphor is capable of divorcing the building from its former use as a clinic and helping to project its new identity on the cityscape as a day-care centre.

Nils Krause

A former psychiatric clinic was to be repurposed, initially for an interim period of five years. It was therefore important to create a well-working makeshift solution for children between three months and school age, despite limitied finacial means. Simultaneously, we wanted to send a strong signal of a new beginning in the external appearance.

» In fact, there was no choice but taking on the context head-on, with as much vigour as possible. We wanted the building, including its interior and exterior spaces, to burst with energy, conveying an optimistic development lookout, at least for the children. «
Nils Krause

The clinic used to be a treatment unit for people suffering from depression and drug addiction. This former use should not have a negative impact on the day-care centre. Consequently, colour was an appropriate remedy to dissipate dreariness in the typical 1970s building with its fair-faced concrete walls contoured with wooden boards and dark brown ribbon windows.

  • We collaborated with the artist Judith Brucklacher on the conversion of a former psychiatric clinic, originally for a five-year period of interim use. Together we devised the metaphor of a rose bush and the birds hidden within, an image that now covers the building and sets it aglow in bright colours.

  • Inside, this theme is being continued. The children’s coat hangers are little nesting boxes, seats take on the forms of mushrooms, trees, or tree stumps.

  • Colour ­- as a materially minimal intervention – can effectively underscore the impact of any architectural concept.

  • Since some of the outdoor areas are located well below street level, the former patients’ roof terrace was converted into a large outdoor play area.

  • The existing hospital building on the grounds of the Bürgerhospital in Stuttgart before its conversion and reorganisation.

» I wanted to transform through the design everything recalling the building's gloomy past in order to make it a place where children can feel safe and free. «
Judith Brucklacher

How did the former use of the building affect your design and your colour concept?

Elements

Location

Municipal day-care centre Tunzhofer Straße, Stuttgart

Education
  • Tunzhofer Straße 24
  • 70191 Stuttgart
  • Deutschland

For young children and pupils

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