Halve It Component:

My design will heavily focus on the Nutrition pillar of our school's framework, with a secondary link to the Wellness pillar.

•  Nutrition means eating and drinking healthy and nutritious meals to keep energised

•  Wellness means taking care of our whole selves, not just caring for ourselves when we’re sick or hurt,, it can also mean caring for ourselves mentally and emotionally.

Sustainable Development Goal:

SDG 2: Zero Hunger

The SDG is an organisation dedicated to making the world a better place. Having a Cafeteria will be able to bring people together to have a good meal. It would help students get food into their stomachs and will also help with learning.

School Context:
In the new school, you might notice that there's no actual sitting areas outside of the classrooms. Students are forced to sit on the hard, dirty ground at lunch and recess and many of them don't even eat their food at all. And to top it all off, there is no canteen, so kids who forgot their lunch just have to go hungry, which is a big problem. If kids don't eat, they get hungry, and if they go hungry, they can´t focus, and if they can´t focus, they won´t learn anything.

Blue Zones

Blue Zones are small areas in the world where people live longer and happier lives, and many of them are able to get to their 100th birthday. Diet is an important part of how they are able to live so long, things they consume daily are: nuts, water, beans, whole meals and very plant based foods.

But having a healthy diet can’t stand by itself when it comes to having a longer, happier life, eating with others is also very important.

Scientific studies show that family gatherings don't only offer benefits like bonding and comedy, it can also increase the amount of fruit and vegetables kids consume.  

We can include these healthy elements by having group gatherings in the cafeteria, where we could make healthy, delicious meals for fund raisers for future projects. We would also have booths inside and picnic tables outside so you could sit with your friends.

Hundertwasser

Friedensreich Hundertwasser, born in 1928, was an artist who was famously known for his nature inspired artworks and architecture, and often included nature in his philosophy, ‘The Five Skins’.

In the five skins he thought that we have five skins, each skin representing ourselves and the world around us, the 4th and 5th ones  being Identity and Earth, which are the ones that are going to be used in designing the cafeteria.

To celebrate our ‘school skin’ we could use the cafeteria space to hang projects we’ve completed over the years on the walls. We could also have some pot plants around the cafeteria with some vegetables and plants in some of them.

How might we design a cafeteria in the building to help socialise, and feed, our students?

The ideal location for the Cafeteria Glowup project is in the Auditorium at Brown and Jolly. This is a large, open, spacious area with beautiful brick arches.

One of the first things to consider is the seating. When the Middle School students were interviewed earlier in 2026, they heavily voted for booths as their preferred seating in the cafeteria. It is important that we take our students’ answers into consideration.  

To ensure our booths use upcycled materials and incorporate the natural environment, a very specific design should be followed.

Take the above booths for example, we could try and remake them using old floorboards, and we can put some veggie patches or herbs in them too, for quick and easy to get snacks. We could also use them for Theo’s solar pizza oven. To support the booths, we could make tables. The easiest way to make them is to get some pallets from Bunnings and upcycle them into tables.

In the auditorium, there are huge beams on the ceiling, so we could hang fairy lights and vines from them to make the place more visually appealing.  We could also hang projects and paintings the students have completed over the years on the walls to make them less boring. We could also have a board with everyone’s electives on it, so people know where they’re supposed to go, and when there’s a special event happening we could put out a flyer about it on the board too.

To help install these, we will need volunteers from students and from professionals to help bring these ideas into Living School.