Educational justice stands as a paramount concern in the European Union's democratic societies (1). Schools situated in socially disadvantaged areas hold untapped spatial potentials that strategic interventions can activate. The architecture of school buildings transcends mere material and construction considerations, evolving into a robust research field that extends beyond construction alone, offering a pathway to foster justice within the education system.
Inclusive pedagogical architecture, when infused with participatory, neuro-didactic, and architectural sociology-based interventions, serves as a catalyst for positive change. Amid the pandemic, 16 hotspot schools in the Ruhr area, a heavily urbanized industrial region in western Germany, became real laboratories, implementing study halls of diverse designs for all types of schools.
In this paper the analysed case studies providing insights into the significance of pedarchitecture (2), showcasing the impact of study halls by teacher and learners participation (3) therefore leading to the following conclusions to be discussed:

Accessibility and Orientation for Inclusion: School space design significantly shapes the learning environment. Inclusive pedarchitecture, featuring wide corridors, barrier-free access, and elevators, goes beyond convenience; it becomes a fundamental prerequisite for equal opportunities, signaling that everyone has the right to education, regardless of physical or linguistic limitations (4).

Flexibility for Individual Learning Styles: Pedagogical architecture supports different learning styles: Flexible classrooms consist of flexible and different furniture for e.g. for large, small or overweight students. They are acoustically well adapted for individual and group work, lectures and discussions - an essential prerequisite for learning the surrounding national language.

Community Spaces as Social Hubs: Beyond being physical spaces, auditoriums, libraries, and playgrounds serve as places for encounter, exchange, and social learning. Successful pedagogical architecture consciously creates and fosters these spaces, promoting social interaction and cohesion.

Sustainability as an Educational Mission: Schools, as role models, shape students' awareness of sustainable practices through choices in building materials, energy efficiency, and renewable energy use. Sustainable pedagogical architecture not only imparts knowledge about environmental and climate protection but also embodies these principles.

Aesthetics, Appreciation and Co-Creation: Aesthetically pleasing school buildings co-created in participatory processes signal appreciation to learners and staff, positively impacting learning motivation. This has a positive effect on the learning motivation. Therefore, schools should not only prioritize functionality but also incorporate thoughtful design elements decided by the pupils.

Study Halls as In-School Learning Spaces: More than physical spaces, study halls embody a concept allowing students to learn according to their needs, regardless of their personal life situation. Particularly crucial during the pandemic, study halls provide a protected space for undisturbed learning, accommodating various situations where students may lack optimal conditions at home. Some share small apartments with many family members, have no own or quiet space to learn or no technical equipment. Study halls become places of equal opportunity.

Recognizing this potential, pedagogical architecture becomes a transformative force for educational justice when synergized with pedagogy, architecture, authorities, and policies. It shapes schools into inclusive spaces, ensuring that every child and youth has equal opportunities in their educational journey, transcending barriers related to background, gender, or abilities.

Children are growing up within an environmental crisis that is a result of the Anthropocene - the epoch where human’s impact has been causing irreversible damage on earth. Education is one of the important pillars of coping with this crisis to create awareness and foster “response-ability”¹ in children. Winograd² ddefines children and young people as “agents of change” that can take actions towards environmental care and therefore understand human-nature entanglements through nature-focused educational activities. Children can learn “the arts of living on a damaged planet”³ and reconnect with nature through gathering embodied and experiential knowledge about their interconnectedness through play. This paper addresses the outcomes of a one-year design project that can be used in educational settings with children to enhance human-nature relationship. The Treesense project’s initial idea was creating a play-kit to bring the sensation of being a tree as an embodied experience to children to empathize with nature. Within the project, the 'tree' serves as a metaphor symbolizing nature, functioning as an archetype to familiarize children with the concept of the natural world. The design process embraces co-design workshops with children and adults, and involves diary studies done with university students (EdenLab,unibz) in order to get a thick understanding of what a tree might feel. This paper delves into the design process of the Treesense project, highlighting the two outcomes (diary-on-board and play-kit prototype). The first one is a diary-on-board designed as an educational tool to observe and make sense of human-nature relationship through an auto-ethnography. While the diary logging takes a more personal and reflective approach, the play-kit prototype emphasizes an embodied experience achieved through a collective, bodily play activity. The prototype was created with a round carpet as a base, wearable textile probes that can be paired with bluetooth electronic modules and interaction cards giving indications of play possibilities. The carpet is a centerpiece on which a child acts as a tree with the playful support of other children around the carpet, engaging through interaction cards and probes. During the project, we collaborated with Education Faculty students who could be the potential facilitators of such tools in the future. After having logged their diaries, the students played with the first mock-up of the play-kit in order to bring their personal reflections from the diary studies to a collective embodied play experience. Thereby, the diaries functioned as a preparation stage for pretend play and helped the students engage with nature through a first-person perspective. This paper sheds light into these two formats that follow four stages of engaging with trees: observing, changing perspective, sensing and feeling as a tree. While diaries give space for reflection over time, the play-kit provides a more spontaneous experience in which the body becomes the main medium. The paper reflects on how new ways of engaging with nature for children can emerge through collaborations between design and education. In the intersection of disciplines, design manifests abstract concepts with creative methods, while education delineates the parameters and confines of these ideas.

Imagine a muddy road, its once promising trajectory now marred by neglect. This seemingly mundane sight, nestled beside the bustling Faculty of Architecture in Prague, becomes the unexpected catalyst for a unique student competition. The competition, conceived by the author, transcends the boundaries of mere problem-solving, weaving together the seemingly disparate threads of existentialism, Moroccan pedagogy, and the yearning for belonging within a built environment. It let students to not only think about big concepts as participatory democracy, but experience it as well.

At its core, the competition delves into the profound questions posed by existentialism. It asks students to confront the absurdity of the human condition, the inherent meaninglessness of our existence, and the responsibility we hold in shaping our own reality. But it doesn't leave them adrift in this philosophical quagmire. Instead, it offers a practical path forward, urging them to find meaning through action.

This is where the muddy road steps in, transformed from a neglected passage into a potent symbol of existential angst. The competition challenges students to reimagine this space, not just as a physical pathway, but as a microcosm of their own existential journey. They are tasked with understanding the needs and desires of the users – their fellow students – and designing a space that fosters a sense of belonging, purpose, and engagement.

But how does Moroccan pedagogy enter this equation? Drawing inspiration from the unique educational approach practiced in Moroccan universities, the competition emphasizes experiential learning. Students aren't simply presented with a problem to solve; they are actively involved in the process of defining it, understanding its complexities, and proposing solutions. They engage in workshops, discussions, and site visits, immersing themselves in the lived experiences of those who navigate the muddy road daily.

This participatory approach fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility among the students. They are no longer passive observers, but active agents of change. Their voices are heard, their ideas are valued, and they are empowered to shape the space that will impact their lives and the lives of their peers.

But the impact extends far beyond the redesigned space itself. The competition becomes a transformative experience for the students involved. By grappling with complex philosophical concepts and translating them into tangible action, they gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world. They experience the power of collective action and the profound satisfaction of creating something meaningful.

The "blessing feeling of being a part of something" becomes a potent reality. The students are no longer simply traversing a muddy road; they are co-creators, shaping not just the physical environment, but also their own sense of belonging and purpose. This, in essence, is the true essence of the competition: a journey from existential angst to empowered action, from muddy paths to meaningful spaces, and ultimately, from individual isolation to a shared sense of community.

Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is a city shaped by conflicts and climate change, struggling to rebuild the conditions for safety and livability (UN-Habitat, 2019; Abulkadir, 2020). The paper presents the case study of a project for the regeneration of the main university campus of the city as an occasion to research about the evolving concept of contemporary universities’ compounds (Taylor, 2016) and their contextualized role in envisioning a better urban future in a social justice perspective.

The Gahayr Campus of the Somali National University was among the public facilities foreseen in the 1970s urban development plan and the result of the cooperation between Italian and Somalian technicians. The original spatial layout was developed at the Faculty of Architecture in Rome by Ludovico Quaroni and Salvatore Dierna in 1976 as part of an intense research activity about university campuses and urban design tools (Terranova, 1985; Puglielli, 1996). The structure remained in operation until the outbreak of civil war in 1991 and for the following two decades, it has then been used for military operations and highly damaged by the persistent state of urban guerrilla (Sheppard, 2017). Since 2020, the project “Infrastructural and Strategic Strengthening of the Somali National University Reconstruction of the Gahayr Campus”, financed by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation and coordinated by Politecnico di Milano, has been dealing with the restoration of the remaining campus buildings and the development of a new masterplan that will guide the reconstruction and expansion of the entire premises.

The design strategy moves from the study of the history of the campus and of its current conditions, with the aim of strengthening its identity by triggering a process of regeneration and reappropriation, resulting in a contemporary pleasant, inclusive, safe, and accessible environment for learning and socializing. The new campus is imagined as a forested park of knowledge, where testing sustainable urban and architectural solutions to improve living, teaching, and learning conditions while facing the effects of socio-economic unpredictability and climate change. The vision of the campus as a park interprets the metaphoric concept of ‘growing the future’, imagining the rebirth of the Gahayr Campus, as a garden that has suffered hard times, but that is ready to reborn, full of new plants, new seeds that germinate, a campus full of students moving the first steps of a new personal and collective life under the trees’ shadow. The campus itself, it’s a seed for Mogadishu’s rebirth.

The strategy articulates the vision in a clear structure, building on the original Quaroni’s meta-design approach to allow a contextually appropriate and progressive design development and construction. The case study allows to discuss the role of contemporary education facilities as common goods and common grounds in fragile contexts, investigating how urban and landscape design could integrate and combine justice and beauty (Mass, 2019) in strengthening the present and future civil society.