Creche panache: by creating a complex series of small, enfolded spaces, the architects have tried to make this creche into a series of places with which little children can identify.

Childcare facilities for families of students, faculty and staff at the University of Toronto had, until recently, been located in several different buildings scattered across a campus in the heart of the city. Design of a new building to house an Early Learning Centre on the campus made it possible to bring all under one roof, provide opportunities to develop diverse educational programmes, and create spaces that are specifically designed for babies and children.

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The new facility, which provides accommodation for 102 children in a two and a half storey building, is on a small site on Glenmorris Street. Although several modest two-storey houses nearby recall the former residential character of an inner-city neighbourhood, more recently this site had been surrounded by larger university buildings. A graduate student residence, designed by Morphosis in association with Teeple Architects and completed in 2000, is nearby and the main university library and sports centre are just a few streets away. Within this distinctly urban setting, the architects sought to create small domestic-scale spaces appropriate for children and which would acknowledge the immediate neighbours. Yet this building is clearly neither a house nor an institution.

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The childcare centre is not a building with a well-established typology, but social and demographic changes in Canada--where the number of single-parent families has increased and many more women are entering higher education as students, faculty members and staff--have prompted a need for more childcare facilities. Most recent buildings of this type have tended to be modest in size, often fitted into existing spaces or planned as single-storey buildings on large sites where land for outdoor play areas is readily available and directly accessible at ground floor.

By contrast, this building is relatively large and the site, though centrally located, close to public transport and easily accessible on the campus, was quite small and defined by existing buildings. As a consequence, the Centre is planned on two and a half floors with a deck, a small outdoor play space in the garden and on roofs at every level. The main entrance to the Centre is on Glenmorris Street with the reception area, offices and a kitchen contained within grey brick walls along the main entrance ramp. The building has also been sited to retain a large black walnut tree at the back of the site, which has become the focus of an outdoor play area that is clearly visible from the main entrance.

Circulation is designed with a long daylit ramp, round which there is an intricately connected series of play spaces and classrooms. These are organized in groups which share service cores and a large multi-purpose room that has been created by aggregating circulation spaces on each floor. In addition to the ramp, a series of intricately cut lightwells also provide tantalizing glimpses from one space to another and out across the outdoor terraces. Although modest in area, the impact of these lightwells is significant three dimensionally, and the use of different colours to identify each of the shafts introduces added interest with tints of reflected light.

Having designed several other childcare centres for different communities in Canada--commissions which reflect a level of concern for the provision of community-wide care--the architects have continued to explore the spatial intricacy of this newly developing building type to provide visual stimulation and create spaces where individuals can play and small groups work. Walls and ceilings are fragmented and the value of changes in level has been further developed by forming recessed pits and loft spaces within the floors of play areas to create variety and experiential richness for the children in ways that do not merely rely on furniture but have become an integral part of the project. Located at the outer edges of the building and formed by the external envelope, these lofts are moulded by folds that are conspicuous both inside and out. The use of the roof to provide outdoor terraces and shaded play areas is valuable and further underlines the ambiguity of inside and out.

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This folding of spaces prompted the use of metal for the external cladding. It is a move which defines the centre as distinctly different from the small timber houses opposite and the neighbouring larger academic buildings, yet it successfully avoids the suggestion of an overwhelmingly institutional character. The metal finish sparkles and the repetitive grid of vertical standing seams combines with the perforated metal enclosure of the terraces and informal patterns of glazing to make a facade that offers glimpses into the life of the place, reflects light and creates a playful character that seems wholly appropriate for this very particular world within the academic community and the city. B. C. and A. W. L.