ok. for me as an architect which is working in china i would say immediately: typical chinese architecture.

why? it’s too huge! this is a kindergarten for children. their age will be around 2-6. the scale can not be right.

they would need a one floor to maximum 2 floor building. and certainly they do not need a double floor.

at the age of 5 you see everything much more bigger as you would be 15 years old.

the language of the floorplan is fine, just the scale is totally wrong.

this will be probably not the mistake by the architects, just the clients demand is (almost )always like this in china.

make it bigger, taller………….

A Dalian local here, which is where this kindergarten building is located. It actually went up a good year ago, probably more; IIRC I saw it around a year and a half ago and thought it was an imaginative office complex.

The kindergarten is located in Dalian’s Software Park, an Ascendas/Yida collaboration. To be more precise, it is located opposite Northern China’s first drive-thru McDonalds, the GPS co-ordinated are here if anyone wants to look around on Google Maps here’s the link: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Dalian,+Liaoning,+China&ll=38.887935,121.545503&spn=0.001775,0.004689&t=h&z=18

Ascendas are a Singapore company (perhaps that’s related to the Singapore connection) and Yida are a large China based developer, though their work varies depending whether they’re using in-house people, or just throwing their name to something and outsourcing the work.

For some sense of perspective, a local office worker will probably earn 3000 Yuan per month, an apartment in this area will cost around 14,000 Yuan per square meter new (slightly above average for Dalian) while fees for an better than average (but not foreign owned, and less fancy building, both of which add a premium) are around 2000 Yuan per month.

If you’re doing any Dalian or Northern China stories, email me. Happy to provide some background info. :)