Reborn in Wood: Asahi Kindergarten
After 50 years, Asahi Kindergarten is being reborn in wood. The original structure for the school had been a reinforced concrete (RC) structure, but after almost a half century of use, the building was showing its age and needed to be replaced. When deciding to rebuild, the owner chose to go with an ecologically friendly wood building this time, not just a better learning and teaching environment for the children and staff to enjoy, but it also proved to be more efficient to design and economical to build. The new school, a two-by-four fireproof structure with its several classrooms for the students, a staff room, administration office, and a large playroom within the building constructed using bowstring nail plate trusses with a roof span of 13.5m and total floor area of 1,780m². The new Kindergarten is being constructed in two phases – so as not to not disrupt the students – building half the new building and relocating the students, then demolishing the old RC structure and completing the second phase of its construction. The first phase has been completed, the second phase is underway and upon completion the building will consume 320 m³ of SPF dimension lumber and other wood product in its construction. Asahi Kindergarten is located in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture and has over two hundred students. It is owned and operated by Nagoya Asahi Gakuen, was designed by NICOM Corporation, and the respective general contractor and sub-contractor for the project is Sugimoto Gumi and Tokai Build. The wooden structural components and nail plate roof trusses were supplied and constructed by Mitsui Home.
NICOM Corporation, an architect firm based in Nagoya has designed over twenty large-scale two-by-four fireproof structures since it first planned and designed a 2×4 elderly care facility, “Flower Search Nursing Home” twenty years ago. COFI / Canada Wood is glad to see the progress this company and others have made expanding the non-residential wood market in Japan and we are looking forward to visiting the Asahi Nursery School in Nagoya when it is fully reborn in April 2025.