Embrace Imaginative Spirit At This Chromatic Kid’s Center

As a schoolkid in the 1990’s, there was nothing like the satisfaction of opening a fresh box of colored pencils and seeing them laid out in a row in all their rainbow glory. (Nowadays the corresponding thrill might be peeling off the screen sticker on an iPad.) Keiichiro Sako and his team at Sako Architects recall this simple analogue pleasure for Gen Alpha in their concept for Poles, a members-only children’s center in Shenzhen Bay Sports Center, a stadium in China’s third most populous city. The atrium of the 65,000-square-foot project is Guggenheim Museum–style, with a gently spiraling white ramp that leads tiny feet up the three stories. Piercing all levels are five enormous cylindrical volumes accessed by the ramp and divided into 25 activity rooms, such as a dance studio, library, and sandbox. The volumes’ exteriors are surrounded by 436 pencil-like aluminum poles powder-coated a gradient of colors. Structural columns are painted to match. The effect continues in the basement, where two unexpectedly bright and airy swimming pools can be found. There, vibrant aluminum pipes arranged as horizontal ceiling baffles create the impression of swimming beneath an indoor rainbow.