SFU UniverCity Childcare

Situated in the heart of the Simon Fraser University - UniverCity neighbourhood, the Childcare Centre fosters its community connections through an engaging street front, visual permeability, and social programming. A public park, an elementary school, and mid-rise residential buildings frame the site.

The main challenge of this project was to meet the rigorous ‘Living Building Challenge’ criteria and provide an innovative amenity built with locally-sourced and non-toxic materials. In addition, our challenge was to honour the curiosity, intelligence and creativity of  the children who will spend years learning and playing here, by reflecting the values of the ‘Reggio Emilia’ approach to early childhood education.  

Rejecting catalogue-based play equipment, we invited local daycare children to help us re-imagine play spaces and we collaborated with local artisans to develop unique play features. The site provides children with a diverse range of creative, physical and social forms of play - a space where children can create their own experiments and performances. Working creatively with the site topography, we tucked the building into the existing slope and maximized the outdoor play space by making the rooftop accessible. This strategy provides clear views for supervision and a great opportunity to integrate a slide from the roof to the sand play area below.