Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/child-care-facility-design-the-common-core-of-a-child-care-center/5011482/
The notion of a child care or other early childhood education center organized as a series of houses around a common core of shared facilities is not so unusual. We came to the realization of the functional and financial efficiency of this arrangement after observing many such child care centers in Scandinavia, especially Stockholm.Stockholm has a long-standing commitment of providing child care services for all those who apply for it. As the City Commissioners for Social Service and Real Estate said, "The queue for day-care places was to be 'dispersed through building' as soon as humanly possible" (Stockholm's Day-Care Centers, 1985). In a ten-year period from the mid-1970s, 30,000 child care places were created within the municipality. A subsequent mayor made the commitment to provide at least 95% of the municipal-wide demand for child care and early childhood education by the end of his term. As a result of these commitments, there are child care centers by the dozen throughout the central city and throughout all the surrounding suburbs, both upper-middle class and poorer, older central city areas and newer planned developments, old-time Swedish and newer immigrant. Most are planned as a series of what they call "dwelling areas" plus common ...