Halve It Component:

My design project focuses heavily on environment pillar of our school.

A typical Middle School environment is full of rigidness, straightforwardness, and stress about class work, social stuff and students being bothered about things outside of school. This overwhelming environment can feel like the water to a drowning middle schooler, it can drain them of all their energy fast. What do these tired teenagers need to ease the stress and tension they feel at typical schools? They need nature, when we intertwine architecture with nature it can change the whole environment. Ever walked through a forest and immediately felt at ease? Applying this feeling into a school is crucial to ease stress buildup and get rid of the rigidness. Not only does this improve overall wellness just by altering the environment, it also freshens up the awful school air, making it easier to just take a big breath without it feeling suffocating.

School Context:

If you look at our school on the outside it seems kind of bland, but what's missing? What's missing is life, the soft whimsy of nature. While this makes things easier to manage, the absence of nature makes everything emptier and duller, it also makes the school air hit worse. By adding plants on the inside and the outside of the building, it actually increases the mood of middle schoolers by softly adding that calming nature feeling, and it makes the air more fresh, further increasing mood and health. Inviting trees and plants into our school also invites butterflies and birds to join in as well

In Australia, green learning environments are linked to improved cognitive function. Studies show that nature exposure helps restore attention spans, enhances working memory, and boosts academic engagement, which is critical for middle school success.

Liveability

Adding plants into everyday life improves liveability by lowering stress, purifying indoor air, and boosting overall focus. Adding greenery transforms ordinary spaces into healthier, more restorative sanctuaries. 

Blue Zones

Applying plants to everyday life contributes to these extraordinary blue zones. It is scientifically proven that plants lower stress, improving overall psychological wellbeing. The key to a healthy body is a healthy mind as it's also proven that low stress boosts your immune system. This can be seen in the Blue Zones throughout the world. Almost all the Blue Zones have a high level of lush greenery. One of the Blue Zones, Sardinia in Italy, actually has the largest overall forest area in all of Italy where approximately 50% of the island is covered in trees and lush greenery. These facts prove that adding plants to everyday life is a contribution to the high life expectancy in the blue zones.

Hundertwasser

“The relationship man and vegetation must have again religious dimensions. Only if you love the tree like yourself you will survive.”

This quote from Hundertwasser, the futurist who advocated for “tree tenants”, is a strong way to reflect how the mind and body reacts to trees, and vegetation in general. Having plants and architecture work with each other, instead of against, is crucial to not just survival, but also the way you live as a happy person.

How can we ensure our physical environment is as alive as the learning happening within it?

Imagine a school environment where architecture and nature came together, now imagine that coming to life…

A usual school is described to be stressful, socially pressuring, and tiring. Adding plants into that environment can tune down the stress a lot of notches. It's scientifically proven that greenery lowers cortisol and freshens air, overall improving mental and physical health. But how can we combine the architecture with the plants when they are usually made completely separate? This is where the idea of tree tenants comes in…

Tree Tenants is a concept originally thought out by futurist architect, Hundertwasser. The trees are planted in stainless steel tubs right outside the walls, using one cubic meter of dirt, with specialised root baskets to secure the tree as it grows. We can also use a similar idea for smaller plants. There's also more natural alternatives like vines naturally growing over brick. This idea of implanting greenery can imitate the feeling you get of walking through nature and applying it to school environments, which are usually stressful.