| Name of the school | Takaya Nursery School (Osaka Prefecture) |
| Delivery Date | September 2020 |
| Item/Target | Shoe cupboards and storage lockers |
In September 2020, we manufactured lockers and shoe cabinets for the nursery room for children aged 0 to 5 years old at Takaya Nursery School in Habikino City, Osaka Prefecture, as the school was rebuilding its building. The school, which has a 40-year history, will welcome children in its new building, carrying with it all its traditions.
The main gate with a Japanese-style garden 
I will do my best today as well, in prayer to Kinjiro Ninomiya.
The concept of the new building is a calm, modern Japanese style. It incorporates Japanese elements to suit Furuichi, a town that is home to a group of ancient burial mounds that are a World Heritage Site, and cherishes the calm atmosphere and warmth of the solid wood used by Nakayoshi Library.
They first learned about Nakayoshi Library at a nearby kindergarten's reopening ceremony for its newly renovated building. They were impressed by how well our wooden lockers and tables matched the atmosphere of the kindergarten's building, and more than anything, they fell in love with the quality of the materials and the finish after actually seeing and touching them.
We created lockers with the same specifications for the "2-3 year old room" and the "3-4 year old room." The scent of cypress that fills the room creates a soothing space with a gentle natural wood atmosphere.
Each nursery room is separated by sliding doors, so having the same lockers creates a more uniform look.
2 and 3 year old room 
4 and 5 year old room
When it comes to remaking furniture, the first thing to consider is ease of use. In the first interview, we started by taking the existing locker as a reference and clarifying what was easy to install and what was difficult to use.
Until now, items were stacked in one frame, which had the advantage of being able to store items of any size, but it also had the drawback of making it difficult to take items in and out.
To solve this problem, the lockers are designed with dividers for each item, allowing you to keep your items neatly organized .
Children find it more difficult to organize than adults think, so making it visible helps promote their growth and development.
Generally, it is the parents or caregivers who put things in and take things out of the baby lockers. Putting things in and out from a height that is too low can cause injury.
The bottom part is used to store miscellaneous items that are not used frequently on a daily basis, and the lockers are about 30cm taller than those for other age groups.
Lock designed to be difficult for infants to open 
Height to match waist wall
Scraping to match the baseboard of the wall 
Rear padding to prevent documents etc. from falling
The first piece of furniture that children touch when they arrive at the kindergarten is the shoe cupboard. The texture that makes you want to rub your cheek against it is something that only Nakayoshi Library products can offer.
We believe that the entrance is the "face" of the nursery school.
The sizes of the squares are different for kindergarteners and the top row for adults.
All of the wood used at Nakayoshi Library is domestically produced. In particular, the cypress used for the main body of the furniture is from Kochi Prefecture, which is considered to be of particularly high quality even within Japan.
Japan is the second largest forest country in the world. It is good to have a lot of forests, but in Japan, about 40% of the forests are cedars and cypresses that were planted after the war. Forests planted by humans need to be circulated by hand, with the following process : "Cut off branches and thin out trees to grow them, harvest the grown trees to use them as lumber or products, and then replant them." However , Japan imports and uses lumber from overseas, which is cheaper than domestic lumber (lumber harvested from domestic forests), so many forests are left abandoned and the role of forests is not being utilized. In recent years, the use of domestic lumber has been gradually increasing, but 70% of it is still imported from overseas. Making use of Japan's forest resources also leads to protecting forests overseas, which continue to decline.
We first met with him in August 2019. We shared our ideas and finally started full-scale furniture design in March 2020. Although we were limited in the number of direct meetings we could have due to the distance between Kochi and Osaka, and the impact of COVID-19, we made every effort to provide suggestions that would bring him closer to his ideal kindergarten.
While we are responsible for everything from holding meetings to drawing up plans, making the products, and delivering them, we also believe that this has the benefit of giving the nursery schools peace of mind in their hands. And doing things consistently gives us a sense of accomplishment, which allows us to make good suggestions to the next nursery school. We hope that the furniture at Nakayoshi Library will continue to grow old together with the children for 10 or 20 years to come.
