Contemplating and gathering
Schoolyard
school secondary school kindergarten educational campus housing complex
The outdoor space of a school where children play, rest, talk and learn outside the classroom.
What it solves
It makes room for free movement and for meeting across ages. With trees, ground that absorbs rain and shaded corners, it stops being a hot slab and becomes a cool place for the school and the neighborhood.
Today
Combine areas for running with quiet corners, large trees, soil, sand and water. Prefer surfaces that let rain through and design a direct gate to the street so the schoolyard can open to the community.
Common mistake
Covering the whole schoolyard with concrete without shade and devoting all of it to a single court.
Tomorrow
The schoolyard can be a climate refuge, a vegetable garden and a classroom at the same time. In the afternoon it can stay open to the neighborhood. On a campus or in a development it should be thought of as part of the network of green spaces and not as a closed lot.
Fact Paris schoolyards add up to about 73 hectares of asphalt or paving, which is why the city is gradually turning them into cool islands.
Where it comes from
- 1Fröbel’s pedagogy Bad Blankenburg, Germany, 1837 to 1840
The first kindergarten took the image of the garden to speak of a childhood that grows like plants, cared for and free. - 2Oasis schoolyards Paris, France, since 2018
The city replaces asphalt with trees, vegetable gardens, water play and light, porous surfaces. It also opens schoolyards to the neighborhood outside school hours.
Masters
- Herman Hertzberger Delft Montessori School, Delft, Netherlands, 1966
He took as much care with the outdoor space as with the classrooms, softened the transition between the street and the school and left the playground open for neighborhood children to use after class.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Contemplating and gathering
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.