“Nursery Fields Forever” is an original architectural concept that recently won the AWR (Architecture Workshop in Rome) International Ideas Competition. Conceptualised by Italy-based architectural practice aut- -aut (including designers Gabriele Capobianco, Edoardo Capuzzo Dolcetta, Jonathan Lazar, and Davide Troiani), the concept brings nature and education together by visualising a nursery school that teaches kids how to farm.
The competition brief asked participants to consider a new age nursery school with a system of education that is different from the norm. In response, the design team from Rome proposed an establishment that puts urban farming and environmental awareness to practise. The school is founded on three teaching principles: learning from nature, learning from technique, and learning from practice.
To support these principals the designers proposed open space, classroom-less buildings that blur the definition of inside and outside. Plants grow and animals roam freely inside while gardens, greenhouses and agricultural plots make up the surrounding campus.
Children are encouraged to interact with animals and plants while they learn how to grow and harvest their own food. The idea is based on developing the young students’ inherent curiosity about their natural surroundings in order to shape their appreciation for nature. Apart from learning food cultivation, nature’s cycles and traditional subjects, the children learn about renewable energy from onsite wind turbines and solar installations.
