LIEN foundation | Lekker

FOREWORD

Mr Lee Poh Wah, CEO, Lien Foundation - September 2014

Scarcity of land is a perennial challenge in Singapore, acting as both a critical constraint as well as catalyst of Singapore's global excellence in urban planning, public transport and housing today. It even defines the national psyche.

In recent years, however, this pressure has intensified. Population growth and urban densification have given rise to the so-called NIMBY ("Not In My Backyard") Syndrome, coined after a succession of plans by the government to site nursing homes, foreign dormitories and preschools close to housing estates met with protests from local residents.

While acknowledging the nation's (and, in fact, their own) need for these facilities, many Singaporeans were evidently unprepared to accept the ailing elderly, foreign workers and noisy preschoolers at their doorstep. It was against this paradoxical backdrop that our first conversations with Lekker Architects—a Singapore-based firm helmed by Harvard graduates—took place in late 2013.

For a number of years, the foundation had been involved in early childhood education, focusing on advocacy and capacity building. But we were slowly realising the importance of changing not only mindsets and skill sets, but also sets in themselves.

How should the set for a child's most important years—the preschool—look like? Where else, other than the ubiquitous HDB void deck, can these vital places be sited in space-constrained Singapore? What inspiring and attractive forms of architecture can we deploy to turn NIMBY into PIMBY ("Please, In My Backyard")?

Spatial solutions are important to consider because unlike other natural resources that Singapore is infamously short of (say, water), space is a resource that can be used to our advantage, even with limits, through redefinition and reimagination. It is the architect's Third Eye that enables this; he sees what others cannot.

This showcase of 10 new preschool concepts is the result of this collaborative examination with Lekker Architects. It seeks to look at space in Singapore in a different way, through a discovery of underused and overlooked plots around Singapore that could—with a little fairy dust—be turned into the magical spaces of a child's first school. Our children will benefit. Teachers will, too.

A preschool must be a great space to be a child, and to be with a child. We are presenting these concepts just as the Singapore government is revving up the construction of preschools to meet an increasing demand. 200 new preschools will be built in the next few years and locations for each will need to be found. It is a critical window of opportunity to rethink the homes

of our preschools and go beyond the cookie-cutter void deck classroom. If we miss this window, and brick and mortar is laid, a similar opportunity for change will not present itself again for years.

But the potential of this project extends far beyond the early childhood sector. We hope for this exercise to be a catalyst for a deeper rethinking of space in land-scarce Singapore. Amid our condominiums, casinos, commercial offices and country clubs, critical social services must not be muscled out.

Dignified and inspiring new spaces must and can be found for them. Through its work, Lekker Architects opened our Third Eye. We hope it will also open yours, to future spaces of a different class.

TEN SCHOOLS, TEN RULES

The distinctive qualities of each site suggested a new preschool concept, a certain typology. We pursued the design of these via a loose, exploratory process. General principles—core goals and values—emerged in a rather organic manner. Through ten schools, ten guidelines presented themselves.

1. Let the site be a teacher

The natural features of each site should directly influence its educational approach. The preschool's environment becomes a driver of curriculum and a focus for interdisciplinary learning and collaboration among areas of knowledge. At a floating school, for example, capturing the river through art is inseparable from understanding its biology, the life teeming within it. The singularity of place draws the student and teacher, the gardener and the scientist together to learn from itself.

2. Build community

The new preschool connects people as well as knowledge. It becomes an interchange, where the student benefits from the embodied learning of a broader community. This expertise might be crafts, writing, cooking or

gardening. Most of all, it creates new potentials for inter-generational contact: for involving elder members of the public in common projects. The building also reaches out by sharing its special amenities, such as playgrounds and multi-purpose rooms, with its neighbours.

3. Engage the senses

We strive for designs to activate a wide sensory spectrum. Many preschools in Asia, as well as the West, have privileged the visual over other kinds of perception. While we hope for our children to be visually attuned, we understand that the building can directly contribute to experiences in sound and touch as well. Materiality—from wall and floor surfaces, to natural and acoustic elements—is central to this strategy.

4. Foster ownership

The preschool should belong to the students. Oddly, the classic approach to education proposes something quite different: that the institution is an inaccessible object standing above and beyond the student's influence. By informalising the building and emphasising care for its natural setting, we hope to foster a habitual sense of ownership and stewardship. Such an approach empowers the student, as well as challenges them to play an engaged role in the physical and social world.

5. Create a range of scales

Size matters in the production of various comfortable, conducive environments for children to explore. No preschool should be designed at a single scale. In fact, multiple scales should exist within a single space. For this reason, we have placed emphasis on "nested" volumes: alcoves and edges, play enclosures and quiet zones in the midst of free-flowing floor plans. Like the habitats of natural ecologies, our preschools should strive to create a continuum of comfort, which encourages the child to develop in confidence, and to find an appropriate setting for different types of activities and scales of social engagement.

6. Design for memory

Each preschool should leave the students with strong impressions. For this reason, each has been given a distinctive identity, a design language and an atmosphere. This should also be true of the spaces within. This is achieved less through the use of extravagant forms or materials, but instead by reconsidering the conventions of preschool buildings: the relationship of their parts to each other, indoor and outdoor, the inclusion of unusual elements and discovery.

7. Learn to play, play to learn

In these proposals, learning and play are not treated as discrete activities. By contrast, we understand play as a medium of cognitive growth, and to be most important among the student's activities. For this reason, large-scale elements for imaginative play have been directly integrated into the architecture of the preschool itself. As exercise has been shown to improve mental activity, structures for physical play are also brought into the interior spaces, and not removed to an isolated "playground".

8. Take risks

The design of our schools reflects a recent re-evaluation of risk in the preschool context. Rather than attempting to insulate children from the possibility of minor injury, circumstances are created to guide them through habitual situations that are (to a small degree) hazardous. Supervised risk not only helps to instil competence, but another character skill as well: the courage to tackle formidable challenges.

9. Let the outside in

There is an intentional ruggedness about many of the proposed preschool spaces, an attempt to remain porous and open to Singapore's distinct climate and environment. In the spirit of projects such as the Natural Learning Initiative, we hope to shift students away from sealed rooms to places where they can get their hands dirty. At the same time, we have opted out of many "sustainable" devices such as green walls that are currently fashionable. Instead, our outward orientation aims for a simpler (and deeper) re-engagement of children with the natural world.

10. Share the wealth

Each school hosts a special feature conceived in response to its particular setting that is potentially shared with others. The school along the beach has a large open tent. The school over the canal has a waterwheel and growing wetlands, and the school across the lawn, a pocket of jungle. These are intended to form a network of special facilities for learning and need not be exclusively "owned" by a single institution. Our preschool spaces may be visited or temporarily occupied by students or other members of an interested public.