△ Project Video01 Background – Immigrant Cities Experiencing Rapid Population Growth
As a rapidly expanding immigrant city, Shenzhen faces a significant challenge: limited land resources versus high demand for educational facilities. This issue is especially pronounced here compared to other cities. Whether offline or online, the topic of education for children of all ages—and the resulting debates about housing near schools—has become a major focus in recent years. Given the constraints of urban land, the trend toward high-density, intensive campuses will persist.
Shenzhen Bay First Kindergarten is a high-density, intensive kindergarten project designed and managed by Shenzhen Tianhua. Located in the Shenzhen Bay Area, a model urban zone south of Industrial Road 8 and east of Anwan 7th Street, it benefits from a strong residential atmosphere. On the east side, a well-defined block is formed by Nanshan Foreign Language High School, Shenzhen Bay School, and Wanghai Primary School, providing comprehensive educational infrastructure. Based on local population numbers, this project plans 21 classes to address the shortage of educational spaces. The site is narrow on the north and south sides, limiting land use, while the above-ground plot ratio is nearly 1.5, making this a typical high plot ratio kindergarten.
△ Functional Requirements
The primary design challenge was optimizing the quality of various usage spaces within a limited site. We addressed four key questions:
Function: How do we resolve the cramped conditions of a high plot ratio site?
Location: How can we create a positive space that supports children’s growth?
Efficiency: How can we maximize space utilization to facilitate time-sharing of school resources?
City: How can architecture positively influence the urban environment?
From these questions, we established two design principles:
Children’s Education: The spatial environment acts as the third teacher for children.
Children’s Scale: Design experiences that reflect children’s perspectives across varied spatial environments.
Guided by these principles, our design concept—“Moss Garden Bonsai”—focuses on richness, openness, fun, and nature to meet the requirements of this demanding high plot ratio kindergarten.
△ Design Process
“Tai Tong Tai” means small and delicate
Limited space led us to stack different functional zones, creating a park system that slopes low in the south and rises to the north in sequence. Beneath the terraces lies a micro-city-like indoor kindergarten space with clear functional zoning. Above, a rooftop outdoor activity area offers a safe, convenient, and spacious garden for children of mixed ages to socialize.
Also known as “bonsai,” the city is impressive
The stacked “Tai Yuan” system creates multi-level, themed landscape gardens. Within an urban space surrounded by high-rises, this garden becomes a visual landmark. Children’s play and growth in this picturesque setting are full of wonder and vitality.
△ Rendering
02 Function – Overcoming the Constraints of a High Plot Ratio Site
Functional spaces were carefully placed on the site. Activity classrooms are aligned north-south to maximize sunlight while minimizing negative effects from neighboring buildings. Children’s activity rooms occupy floors 1 through 3. Public classrooms are integrated into the landscaped northern edge on floors 1 and 2. Office service rooms and a garage are located on the 4.5th and underground (-1) floors respectively, fulfilling all functional requirements.
△ Functional Layout
By recessing parts of the building, a large south-facing activity space is created. The design incorporates child-scale spaces and playful forms. Corridors link various stepped levels, enhancing accessibility to rooftop activity spaces and creating a domain-like scale for the “first floor” courtyard.
The activity zones and landscaping across different terraces integrate to form a three-dimensional “tundra” landscape system from north to south at ground level, providing outdoor venues that exceed expectations for such a high plot ratio. The spatial organization efficiently manages relationships between food delivery, shuttle circulation, and vertical transportation, creating a coherent and orderly environment.
△ Capacity Response
△ Delivery Flow
△ Shuttle Flow
△ Vertical Circulation
03 Place – Creating Positive Spaces That Support Children’s Growth
After resolving basic functional-site contradictions, we pursued innovation by integrating architecture with landscape, blurring indoor and outdoor boundaries, and opening vertical spaces.
Rainbow Mixed-Age Loop
We introduced diverse interaction points across thematic spaces on different levels. Recognizing that children naturally interact across ages, and following the norm in Europe and America for mixed-age education, this approach promotes imitation and knowledge sharing when younger children engage with older peers, while older children develop responsibility, autonomy, and organizational skills.
△ Rainbow Mixed-Age Loop
Rooftop outdoor activity areas with varying platforms and themes provide rich public spaces for mixed-age interactions. On the first floor, the existing flame tree landscape is incorporated into a circular outdoor activity area in the northwest corner near public classrooms. A nature lecture hall was specially designed to create a dialogue with the flame tree, linking the site’s memories with future aspirations.
△ Current Flame Tree
△ Flame Tree
A section of the urban space on the west side of the first floor is reserved for parents as an off-campus waiting area for drop-offs and pickups. This softens the building’s cold exterior walls and creates a street park for residents to relax and socialize daily, contributing positively to the urban environment.
△ West Side of First Floor
According to kindergarten regulations, the second-floor rooftop garden includes not only ornamental gardens but also an ecological small farm and animal sanctuary to support early childhood education.
△ Rainbow Loop
The three-level elevated sunlit courtyard connects to the southern rooftop landscape, enriching children’s activity experiences.
Carefully Designed Teaching Spaces
We created activity spaces across the site that engage young children’s senses using varied forms, colors, and the interplay of light and shadow to craft open, natural, and playful environments.
Science classrooms stimulate curiosity and scientific exploration, fully satisfying children’s desire for experimentation.
△ Science Classroom
Game classrooms support natural play and physical activity, nurturing children’s abilities to perceive movement, observe, remember, think, and imagine.
△ Game Classroom
Art classrooms, with north-facing soft, uniform lighting, support indoor painting activities and cultivate children’s appreciation and expression of beauty.
△ Art Classroom
Sports classrooms feature a climbing wall and basketball court, combined with a spacious elevated sports square, offering all-weather activity spaces for children throughout the park.
△ Sports Classroom
Staggered steps combined with a book corner provide spaces for children to stay, for parents to wait, and for temporary lectures, enhancing the stairs’ diversity and fun.
△ Fun Steps
The children’s theater on the first floor, combined with the northern game square, serves as a semi-outdoor stage for performances, as well as a place for watching movies and reading.
△ Children’s Theater
△ Game Square
The south-facing sunny courtyard features natural elements like sunlight, breeze, and fresh air. Adjacent directly to classrooms, it allows children convenient access to outdoor movement.
Sunshine Courtyard
The morning examination hall, connected by an elevated light and shadow corridor, facilitates entrance health checks and class guidance, ensuring full-day health protection for children. In response to the pandemic, washbasins are placed at the entrance to support ongoing prevention measures.
△ Morning Inspection Hall
We prioritized lighting and ventilation to create a brightly colored, fun restroom environment for young children, supporting moral education through the “toilet revolution.”
△ Children’s Restroom
In this nearly 1.5 plot ratio kindergarten, the architects focused on children’s education and scale, integrating light, shadow, form, and color across all spaces. Outdoor activity areas maximize land use, providing rich sensory environments essential for children’s growth.
△ Public Restroom
04 Efficiency – Maximizing Space Use through Time-Sharing of School Resources
Located in the central southern coastal region of Guangdong Province, Shenzhen experiences a subtropical maritime climate. The design provides various public activity spaces on each floor to accommodate sunny, rainy, and hot weather conditions.
Climate Response
The first-floor sunny courtyard is bright and transparent, serving as a queue waiting area and a space for children to play on sunny days. The elevated game square on the northern side, integrated with landscaping, provides a bright, rain-friendly activity area. A total of 21 activity zones are distributed on the fourth floor, complemented by a 30-meter runway on the first floor, meeting diverse learning needs for different classes and times.
△ Activity Venue
As early childhood education evolves, this project explores innovative operational methods for public kindergartens—such as holiday outreach and improved classrooms—allowing children to grow up with love, freedom, and happiness.
05 City – Architecture as a Positive Urban Element
Returning to the architect’s original “moss garden bonsai” concept, Shenzhen Bay First Kindergarten creatively resolves the tension between site constraints and functional needs. It provides children with a micro-city scale growth environment while making the naturally formed moss garden a visual focal point amid the city’s high-rises.
Children playing bring vitality to the building, making every growth moment a visible image for the entire city.
The main challenge for high-density kindergartens is balancing site limitations with volume. This involves ensuring open, positive spatial elements within urban blocks; addressing detailed functional requirements while adapting to future changes; and creating a natural, healthy, diverse, and shared environment centered on children’s physical scales and behavioral psychology.
In dense urban settings, our architectural spaces respect and explore young children’s potentials and behaviors. The spatial environment becomes a third teacher, fostering adaptability, thinking skills, creativity, and courage. Architects must identify real problems, adopt problem-oriented design approaches, and systematically address relationships between architecture, the city, the environment, society, and the building itself. Through design, architects and engineers create societal value.
Like tiny moss flowers, we learn to bloom beautifully.
△ Construction in Progress
Design Drawings
△ Plan View
△ First Floor Axonometric Diagram
△ Underground First Floor Axonometric Diagram
△ Second Floor Axonometric Diagram
△ Three-Layer Axonometric Diagram
△ Four-Layer Axonometric Diagram
△ Fifth Floor Plan
△ Roof Structure
Project Information
Project Name: Shenzhen Bay First Kindergarten
Location: Nanshan District, Shenzhen
Floor Area: 13,248.44㎡
Designer: Shenzhen Tianhua Architectural Design Co., Ltd
Website: https://www.thape.com/
Contact Email: lidan4@thape.com.cn
Design & Completion Year: 2019 & 2020
Main Creator: Zheng Jian
Architectural Design Team: Shenzhen Tianhua Architectural Studio: Zheng Jian, Zhuang Yonglong, Wu Jinzhen, Kong Mengling, Lu Tao, Mao Gaojian, Wang Yuan, He Junku, Du Bangguo, Wu You, Su Hongri, Zhang Wenguo, Wei Guang (intern), Chen Hong (intern), Xue Fengli (intern)
Construction Drawing Team: Wu Yingmei, Zhang Yang, Zheng Jianhui, Zou Ying, Luo Yuxuan
Structural Team: Liu Chang, Lin Yong, Li Jijie, Yang Shijue
HVAC Team: Guan Yongli, Jia Changyou, Xu Shikui, Li Guiming
Water Supply & Drainage Team: Chen Weipeng, Zhang Wei, Cao Yuqin, Chen Yuanyuan
Electrical Team: Jin Qingyou, Gao Tao, Wu Zhigang, Liu Xun
Interior Design Team: Shenzhen Tianhua Yizhu Interior Design Co., Ltd.: Xiong Zitian, Xu Meng, Xu Guangyue, Zheng Zhiwen, He Ming, Zhang Danmeng, Wu Haiying
Landscape Team: Shenzhen Fangwai Garden Landscape Design Co., Ltd.: Liu Zhe, He Qiong, Chen Pei, Wu Deqing
Clients: Nanshan District Education Bureau, Nanshan District Construction and Engineering Bureau, China Resources Land Urban Operation Management (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (Construction Agency)
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