For the last 46 years the Shirobara Nursery School has been providing day care services to the little tikes of Osaka. But this year they are upping their game and embracing an increasingly globalized environment by establishing a standalone English language school. The White Rose English School will offer English lessons to preschoolers and elementary schoolers.
The design for the new building, which just opened in April, came from female architect Naoko Horibe (previously), who turned to fast-food drive-thru systems for inspiration. Although drive-thru systems don’t conjure up the most favorable of imagery, it actually works quite well in this case. School buses and parents drive into the driveway and kids are dropped off under the school. This makes things easier on rainy days and it also keep the road from becoming congested during peak drop-off and pick-up times.
“We set up two gateways which allowed cars to smoothly drive into the school premises and out, and also reducing the road congestion,” said Horibe. “The facade is designed with semicircles instead of complete circles, showing children’s potential in learning English.”
But fast-food drive-thru systems aren’t the only thing that led Horibe to create her unique school. Located directly adjacent to the spot where the great Takatsuki Castle once stood, the site is steeped in 400 years of history. And to incorporate the current memorial park that now stands where the castle once did, Horibe’s semicircles also allow see-through views of the greenery.
