Kid Space : Sony’s New Day-Care Center Is Embracing and Child-Friendly

When architects design buildings for children they often create the architectural equivalent of the patronizing, cutesy tone adults assume when talking down to kids.

This is seen in nursery schools crowded with huge toy animal figures, with doorways shaped like the entry to a rabbit hutch and windows shaped like giant vegetables.

Or they conjure up fantasies of an idealized, over-stimulated atmosphere haunted by an air of phoniness. This kind of design is found in kindergartens plagued with crude primary colors and stark geometric shapes.

The best buildings for children are sheltering and friendly without condescension, and their architecture allows the kids the mental and physical space to generate their own imaginative realms.

The new child-care center opened by Sony Pictures in Culver City for the company’s staff is a superb example of the best kind of child-oriented architecture. Simple and strong in its design theme, the center is at the same time discreetly colorful with just the right touch of sophisticated playfulness.

“In our concept for the child-care center we decided that the kids should be the stars, not the architecture,” said Ken Williams, Sony’s senior vice president for corporate operations. “The last thing we wanted was a hyperactive visual environment of the kind you often see in such places.”

Designed by Santa Monica-based architect Steven Ehrlich, the 9,000-square-foot center accommodates up to 100 preschool children, ranging in age from 6 weeks to 5 years.

“Sony wanted a space that was generous yet serviceable, and that emphasized simplicity,” Ehrlich said.

The simplicity of Ehrlich’s design is evident from the street. Behind a boundary wall topped by playful wrought-iron railing created by artist John Okulick, one sees a soaring roof that curves up at the ends, like a smile.

The roof is the center’s main design motif. Supported on a series of deep, laminated timber beams, it is concave on the street frontage and convex on the rear side facing the playground. This form, known technically as a hyperbolic paraboloid, creates complex volumes under its sweeping, twisted surface.

From the exterior the dramatic roof seems to offer a welcoming embrace. Inside the building it floats over the entire space like a giant, protective wing.

“With the roof shape I tried to create the sense of being cradled by a mother’s arms,” Ehrlich explained. “The kids might not make the connection directly, but I hope they feel its embrace unconsciously.”

The center’s curved front wall is built of colored brick laid in a woven pattern of beige, red and blue-black. The back wall, overlooking the playground, is a continuous screen of windows and sliding glazed doors framed in warm, natural Douglas fir. The doors open onto a continuous, curving veranda punctuated by a row of steel columns supporting the roof and painted a rainbow of colors.

The interior is divided into five main classrooms. A wide corridor that runs the length of the building separates the classrooms from the staff offices and other support areas lining the front wall.

The south end of the building contains the infant area, where babies lie in cots or crawl around on comforters spread on the cork linoleum floor. An adjoining room is provided for mothers to breast-feed their children in a homey environment.

The infants’ section shares a playground with the next-door toddlers’ room, which accommodates children up to 2 years old. The infants’ and toddlers’ outdoor area is separated from the main space used by the older children, to protect the younger ones from play that might be too rough for them.

The main lobby divides the infants and toddlers from the 3- to 5-year-olds’ area on the northern end of the center. The three large classrooms for the older kids can be opened up into one area with interconnecting doors.

The three classrooms share washrooms equipped with child-size toilets and sinks set low to the floor. The children seem completely at ease in this Lilliputian environment, in which every detail, from the electrically operated touch-sensitive faucets to the handy toilet-paper holders is designed to their diminutive scale.

Each room in the center is an amiable chaos of scattered paint boxes, paint-splattered rolls of paper, stuffed animals, small chairs and tables and impromptu bedding on the floor. Every classroom has low sinks for the children to use and regular ones for the staff.

Since none of the interior partitions reach to the ceiling, the classrooms all seem to be linked in one large family.

The interior color palette is subdued. The walls are painted a calming neutral cream that sets off the richness of the wood in the ceiling and the front glass wall.

The high ceilings, wide windows and corridor skylights allow mostly natural ventilation, backed up by an auxiliary air-conditioning system.

The center, open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. five days a week, is operated under contract by Bright Horizons, a national child-care service that runs 87 centers in the United States.

The center employs a staff of 40 adults to serve the children, and parents are encouraged to help in the classrooms and to participate in the running of the center. The children’s parents come from every rank of Sony’s staff, from executives to mail-room workers.

“We have a totally classless, ethnically diverse small society here,” said director Margaret Wood. “And whatever happens to the children when they’re older, they will have had this kind of experience to remember.”

Whiteson writes on architectural topics for The Times.