Playtime or peace and quiet: 
The children and staff have both thanks to the sliding doors with sound attenuation

The all-day child care centers in Iceland are known as Leikskóli (play schools): They are a combination of a daycare center and a kindergarten for one to six year olds. A play school such as this was created by young, award-winning Icelandic architect, Hulda Jónsdóttir from Garðabær, south of Reykjavik. The building is certified according to the strict environmental standards of Nordic Swan, which has regulations regarding energy consumption, materials and noise pollution.

The Leikskól has room for 130 children, divided into six groups in three age levels, each with their own separate area of the building. Hulda Jónsdóttir designed the interior specifically for the children: The centerpiece is a hall which runs through all parts of the building. This is where the children enter and then follow colored lines on the floor, which lead to their group. All of the rooms are warm, bright and friendly: With white walls, lots of wood and light grey linoleum floors. Large windows and skylights let plenty of daylight into the interior, and well thought-out lighting provides a bright atmosphere, even during the dark winters.

The carefully designed interior also includes targeted management of the room relationships: “It was important to me for there to be a flowing transition between the rooms when the doors are open,” says Jónsdóttir. Depending on the time of day, the children can therefore move around freely, or the areas can be combined into different sizes depending on which doors are open or closed. Hinged doors would have interfered with the flowing impression. For architect Jónsdóttir, it was therefore clear that only sliding doors would do. The challenge here was sound attenuation. On one hand, the quiet rooms, e.g. had to be sufficiently soundproofed, and on the other hand the Nordic Swan label explicitly required adherence to certain noise levels. The solution was finally provided by the sliding solutions with sound attenuation from Hawa Sliding Solutions. A total of 16 sliding doors are used, which run on Hawa Junior Acoustics and Hawa Porta Acoustics hardware.