Outdoor School︎︎︎
Type: School
Location: N/A
Size: 324 SF
Year: 2021
A school where children determine their own curriculum. Deployable structures mark entry and provide cover, with continuous walls tying them together and demarcating the child-run landscape.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a9f48becaf3353cdf42e616e395135927fb139ea462eed9cb710547316b400d6/Interior-Wall-View-Edited-Small.jpg)
In 1943, Carl T. Sørensen proposed the “Adventure Playground”. The idea was simple but radical for urban Norms: provide an uncontrolled space for children to do whatever they want; a landscape “in which children could create and shape, dream and imagine a reality” in the city. In 1969, Paulo Freire wrote his book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. He argued that for education to be truly liberating, the student must play a self determined role in assembling knowledge as a “practice of freedom”.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/74cb2cfce4a8cef587ace22da39d344f5f2cfd8ae3d75216b72c33e1d02467f5/Exterior-View-Edited-Small.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/65eb7787b64e84085cbd7ce37e457b0e489a1464593e5ecb6955ad14ead56d14/Interior-Edited-Small.jpg)
If Sørensen aimed for children’s self determination of play, and Freire for children’s self determination of knowledge, this proposal embraces both. Rather than children following a teacher’s prescribed curriculum, here the teacher supports the child’s adventures. Education becomes a tool for realizing the imagination of one’s environment.
Around children’s busy activity, the classroom structures serve as a calm and functional backdrop. Walls provide the children’s domain. Occasional flaps, nooks and bulges in plan offer attention to the landscape or the beginnings of a new project. Towers act as gateways between the child-led interior, and the adult-led exterior. Opening up only when parents have left, the walls and towers contain a double secret. What appears externally to adults as a respectable school, is internally a landscape of freedom. And what feels to children as freedom, is really their growing education.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0b97470de73d76f6be4b661ed4af142fd8c206daa4f48e5d351fe8b5730fc105/Isometric-Edited-Small.jpg)
© 2021
Daniel
William
Garcia
Smith
Daniel
William
Garcia
Smith