UniCredit Pavilion in Milan contains a new daycare facility for the children of UniCredit employees, also open to the citizens of Milan. A space for children with a modern concept, equipped with large areas designed to encourage relationships, and technologies to offer the very young users a multidisciplinary, interactive place where the use of English, as well as the mother tongue, contributes to nurture multicultural, flexible minds.

The rooms, furnishings and multimedia equipment of Mini Tree have been organized to welcome up to 60 kids between 3 and 36 months old, based on the pedagogical approach of Reggio Children, whose goal is to make the child the central focus of the educational project.

Multimedia and multiple senses are the key terms of this kindergarten, an environment for childhood that is the result of in-depth research on how to stimulate the creativity of children thanks to visual and musical languages, dance, poetry, architecture, design, food and respect for nature.

The pedagogical concept of Reggio Children is summed up in the experience of the daycare center as an “impertinent atelier” that conveys knowledge, where brain, hands, rationality and emotions closely cooperate and where change is the result of the exchange between children and adults.

A 60-inch touchscreen, a multimedia table that emits sounds and lights, an audio playback system to foster development of musical sensitivity, spaces for cooking and gardening, a single large hall to encourage interpersonal relations among children, relaxing lights and colors with structures and furnishings designed to facilitate all the activities, from play to learning to rest.

These are some of the features the architecture studio aMDL has created for this innovative daycare facility, with a focus on education that begins with the aptitudes and curiosity of kids, in the wide range of their multiple forms of intelligence.