The project, dedicated to primary school and kindergarten children, was created in collaboration with pedagogist and anthropologist Lidia Tavani. Two areas of the garden are transformed into workshop spaces suitable for experimenting with original practices of outdoor education.
The entire surface is a composition of very different materials: concrete, rubber, wood, gravel, grass. A central path connects the two areas and is the axis on which all the equipped spaces are placed. At the ends are a small semicircular cavea and the wooden structure of an outdoor classroom. Between the two, a mosaic of laboratory spaces is laid out. Furniture and equipment are almost all original, designed for this project.
A system of wooden frames supports chalkboards, color filters, sound pendants, revolving tiles and panels built by teachers for activities and games with children.
The project was completed a few months before the Covid outbreak. The pandemic gave this space an unexpected centrality. Intensive use of the new workshops has re-emphasized the potential of outdoor learning spaces and the need for innovative projects that come out of collaboration between pedagogues and designers.
In the summer of 2020, the installation was expanded with a “classroom among the trees,” designed as a metaphorical place for the epidemic, with fixed seating spaced according to emergency rules, but suitable for very free use.