I still remember my nursery/kindergarten classroom with a great deal of lucidity. The texture of paint on the chair and tables, the colours and the general layout of the land, as it were. In contrast, I don’t quite remember my teachers or my friends from that period – not to say that they failed me as teachers or friends, it is just what it is. I figure it has much do with being impressionable at that age and that sculpting of space has much to do with the sculpting of imagination. Having done my rounds of pre/nursery school visits in urban India this century, I am struck by how ‘Disneyfied’ everything is. I choose to call them the ‘Mickey Mouse Schools’ – the walls, tables, fixtures plastered with Goofys, Mickeys and Donalds, not to forget the Simbas and the Alladins. Predictable, dull, uninspiring, dead spaces. However all is not lost, as some remarkable architectural and interior minds have silently worked to put out school projects of remarkable inventiveness elsewhere  Take a look.

Bailly School Complex by Mikou Design Studio — Saint-Denis, France

Kindergarten by Eva Samuel Architect Urbanist & Associates — Paris, France

Les Vinyes Primary and Secondary School by MMDM Arquitectes S.C.P. — Barcelona, Spain

Maria Grazia Cutuli Primary School by 2A+P/A + IaN+ + MaO — Herat, Afghanistan

School Barvaux-Condroz by LR Architects — Barvaux-Condroz, Belgium

 

Chromatic Play by Juana Canet Arquitectos — Mallorca, Spain

Sra Pou Vocational School by Rudanko + Kankkunen — Sra Pou, Cambodia

Sarreguemines Nursery by Michel Grasso and Paul Le Quernec — Sarreguemines, France

Antas Education Centre by AVA Architects — Porto, Portugal

The Josephine Baker Schools by Dominique Coulon & Associés — La Courneuve, France

Leimondo Nursery School by Archivision Hirotani Studio — Nagahama, Japan

Timayui Kindergarten by Giancarlo Mazzanti — Santa Marta, Colombia

Galjoen School by Rocha Tombal — The Hague, The Netherlands

Crèche Rue Pierre Budin by ECDM — Paris, France

Kindergarten Kekec by Arhitektura Jure Kotnik — Ljubljana, Slovenia