2016 – Plic & ploc Micro nursery _ Paris France

 

 
Program Interior arrangement of a nursery
Floor area 112 m²
Place Paris, France
Calendar Building site december 2015 – january 2016
Client SARL Plic & ploc
Team Éric Cassar, Marisa Benedetti, Marie Moleva, Youssef Ben Sliman
Engineering BET structure : Ingénet, control office : Cabinet Capri, Fabric sculpture : Emilie Zanon
contractors TCE : Cuartas Aménagement

One enters into this nursery passing through a night-blue entrance hall. The sensory contrast underlines the passage from the outside – the street and the city – to the inside – the children’s space-. The latter is confined but bright. It is a neutral space, where one can get into after having removed his/her shoes. Here, colours are mainly provided by furnitures and toys. In the entrance hall a one-way mirror, placed at a child’s-eye height, invites to discover the nursery space, to see without being seen.

Designing a nursery means to imagine how a little child perceives the space. The child’s senses develop gradually ; firstly suction, then thouch and finally hearing and sight. At the beginning the child has a narrow field of view, but it widens little by little with aging.

With this project we emphasize finding floor coverings with different textures – embossed- . The baby – or the little child – is invited to explore space through the sense of touch, particularly when he/she crawls.

Because of that narrow field of view and also because the limited area, we have created a convertible space. Thanks to it, the child has the impression to live in varied environments. The space is made more flexible thanks to two rotating walls. The latter allow to change the volumes of the room according to their position. These walls remind us the two parts of a «pop-up » book cover. An artist created a fabric-sculpture that can unfold when the wall is opened. This pop-up sculpture is the first one created for an architectured space to this day – to our knowledge-. It presents little and varied patterns the child may be sensible to and which may stimulate his/her sense of touch. The wall, embellished with small shutters and windows, evokes a hut, suitable for child. It is a space to appropriate through the game.
Others partitions of space allow to regulate the sound, or to acoustically insulate some areas, while preserving luminosity.

This nursery also solves classical issues such as the need for the staff to see all the space from everywhere- thus, the changing table is located at the center of the space -, have as much natural light as possible and have quiet areas.