MAD Architects transform a home into a flexible kindergarten by wrapping it in a luminous skin

MAD Architect’s Clover House is a unique hybrid of a kindergarten by day, and personal home by night.

The flexible living and learning space was created when the owner of a small kindergarten school in Japan decided to redevelop his own living space in order to expand an educational area for his students. Construction has begun on converting the original two story house into a dynamic mixed-use space, which will take place by wrapping a luminous skin around the home’s original wooden frame.

The owner of the local kindergarten decided to convert part of his home for his students, when the school’s original land area became too small to accommodate local children. With the idea of home as a theme, the new Clover House will foster little minds by building family-like relationships in the warm and cozy new building. During the day, teachers and students can interact in the comfort of home, eating, studying and playing together. At night, the structure reverts back to a house, where the owner’s family and some of the school teachers will live together in the flexible space.

The design of Clover House was based on the existing wooden frame in the owner’s original home. Preserving its pitched roof, the new building is a modernized take on the original frame, using a translucent skin that covers walls, allowing natural light to pour into windows and enclosed spaces. Arching over the pitched roof, the new soft asphalt shingle roof stretches almost like a blanket, creating unique spaces inside.

The new space provides an educational hub for the small community, while also preserving living quarters for the school’s owner and teachers.