Location: Helsinki
Type: yard design, learning environments
Year: 2020-2023
Collaborators: architect Arkkitehtitoimisto OPUS Oy and Innovarch Oy
At Kuninkaantammi Forest School, nature’s health and well-being benefits are harnessed, and efforts have been made to preserve existing trees, rocks, and other natural elements as much as possible. The forest schoolyard creates a creative and inclusive play and learning environment, promoting diverse and positive movement experiences irrespective of skills.
The vegetation and material palette of the yard seamlessly integrate the school with the surrounding forest. Locally quarried rock is utilised in terracing and the stone walls of the amphitheatre. Fieldstones and trunks of trees felled on-site are repurposed as play and leisure areas. Vegetation also continues within the buildings, with all roofs being green roofs. Facing Kuninkaantammenaukio, the building and the front square open up as part of the square and its material world.
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Photographs Maite González Laurens