Life is better and more satisfying when we begin to understand the built environment that

surrounds us architecturally (1).

Relevance

... from the school's point of view:

As an educational institution, school is an organization, an institution and a learning environment. As such, it is a place whose central pedagogical task is to promote children in a legally secure space on an equal footing so that they can develop the ability to lead an enlightened, responsible and self-determined individual life (2). Appropriate premises must be made available for the corresponding locations of the didactic measures for imparting knowledge and skills that best meet the requirements of everyday school life and the needs of the various user groups.

The majority of pupils in Vienna attend schools that were built in the 19th century during the industrial revolution and whose floor plans already convey the order and discipline required for life in an industrial society (4) or attend existing schoolbuildings, which were constructed lateron. In particular, these existing schools need to be redesigned or rebuilt to meet today's social requirements and the pedagogical demands on knowledge transfer.

As children and young people spend a significant part of their time in school buildings and the demands on schools are expanding from teaching and learning spaces to living spaces, it is obvious to start participation processes for the redesign of existing school buildings. In addition to pupils, teachers, management and other school staff (such as the "school caretaker") should also be involved. These users can be regarded as experts on the school buildings.

Relevance

... from the perspective of architecture:

Building culture education is cultural education that, with different focal points and in various formats with partly artistic means and methods and always based on the STEM subjects, also brings about environmental education, sustainability education, political education and democratic skills. The aim of early education in building culture is to provide young people with the competence to assess high-quality architecture and design and thus contribute to increasing the social value of our designed living space. (4)

Participation

In order to enable project-oriented participation processes for children and young people, they must be motivated, enabled and empowered. In addition to targeted thematic information (in relation to design issues concerning the living environment), it is important to clarify how and in what way participation can take place. The brainstorming and creative processes require support and guidance and, last but not least, the visible results are essential for the children and young people (5).

Implementation

In various course formats ("Learning in educational institutions - architectural mediation/architectural research (3 ECTS) and design programs (10 ECTS), architecture students at TU Wien have developed different mediation formats on the topic of learning, teaching and living space since 2017 and have conducted them with classes in different schools (elementary school, middle schools and high schools). A selection of interesting mediation programs and the results achieved will be presented. The question of social justice is explored on the basis of the examples.

According to the definition given by the Botanic Gardens Conservation International (1), a botanical garden is an institution open to the public that preserve well-documented collections of living plants for conservation, research, recreational and educational purposes. Botanical gardens in the XXI century are places where, unlike classrooms or labs, scientific research, wellbeing, beauty and education can coexist, working in synergy. They are a unicum in the cultural landscape, where often each form of knowledge stands alone and does not communicate with the others. Established mostly on cities’ boundaries, the oldest botanical gardens have gone through urbanisation processes that, if in one hand limits their expansion and complicates their management, in the other hand allow citizens to experience plants, nature and open spaces in a context that is both instructive and enjoyable. For this reason, botanical gardens occupy an absolutely privileged position in the field of education, both in terms of research potential and relations with the public: they are spread mostly all over the country, they are a bridge between academia and schools of all levels, people enter them willingly, with the precious opportunity to relieve themselves of everyday troubles and with a state of mind that could be more suitable for learning. They are, or at least should be, strongly connected to their communities and territories, as is required to any cultural institution. In other words, they can represent both physical and cultural connections between society and plants. For ancient botanical gardens such as the one of Florence, it is essential to find a key to be relevant in today's world, not only as a tourist site, a symbol of a glorious history, but as a living and vital institution, open to the society’s needs. To answer these questions, there is no recipe that applies to all cultural and organisational contexts: in Florence, the present (but also the future) of the Botanical Garden can be represented by a constant dialogue with its audiences, especially the school groups.

The contribution therefore examines the activities dedicated to different school groups, from kindergartens to secondary schools, during the school years 2022/2023 and 2023/2024. What comes up is a complex ecosystem, created by many different events and paths, all aimed at reinforcing the identity of the Botanic Garden as an educative place, in which the generated by the contact with plants and green spaces fosters healthy relationships and the development of global skills. In this case study, plants do not enter the pedagogical context (2), but is that context entering the vegetable space. What ensues is always a new relationship with plants, both outdoors and indoor in the greenhouses. And it is from this relationship that a new awareness of the indissoluble bond that binds human beings to plants can arise.

This article presents the outcomes of a research project involving pre-service teachers from the University of Cantabria (Spain), kindergarten educators, students, and urban planners from the University of Catania (Italy). The investigation focused on institutionalized play spaces (school playgrounds) and non-institutionalized spaces (urban parks). The objective was to analyze the extent to which spaces designed for childhood recreation and free play adhere to the principles of eco-dependency, interdependency, and inclusion, which were proposed as key analytical axes.

Conducted jointly by teams from the University of Cantabria and the University of Catania, this research benefited from the collaborative framework provided by the European University for Customised Education (EUNICE). Aligned with the geography of childhood studies, the research explored how children experience, interpret, and (re)shape the spaces they inhabit. At the same time, this work connects with the field of urban studies that investigates the most appropriate principles to pursue the quality of public spaces for children (Derr & Tarantini, 2016).

Scholars (Francis & Lorenzo, 2006) have highlighted the limited connection between urban playgrounds and children's needs, often characterized by standardized designs that prioritize adult preferences over child-friendly features These spaces, enclosed and protected from traffic, may not fully address children's diverse interests and capacities, potentially catering more to adult caregivers than to the children themselves.

The research underscores the decline in children's outdoor time due to speculative urban planning prioritizing economic profitability and private transportation. Consequently, child-friendly outdoor spaces have been marginalized, leading to an increased reliance on indoor spaces linked to consumerism and technology-based recreation.

Examining playgrounds reveals their significance in children's daily lives. School playgrounds emerge as versatile spaces accommodating diverse interests and abilities, offering opportunities for free play and diminished adult authority. However, challenges arise from the underutilization of playgrounds as pedagogical spaces.

From a methodological standpoint, this research adopts an eco-social perspective (Hirvilammi et al., 2023) to analyze children's play spaces in Santander, Cantabria (Spain), and Catania (Italy). Pre-service teachers assess these spaces through self-produced images to determine their alignment with childhood play, interaction, and connection with the natural environment. This led to identify elements shaping the eco-social quality of these recreational spaces and evaluate various spaces accordingly. Students' active involvement in producing and analyzing images fosters proposals for improvement, enhancing their capacity to design play spaces in line with eco-social principles.

Outdoor education has been a recurring theme in educational and school services in Italy over the last fifteen years. This is demonstrated by the considerable increase in scientific publications on the subject and the renewed interest of practitioners, which have led to the organisation of numerous conferences and seminars; the demands for initial training, which have led to the creation of specific university specialisation courses, and those for in-service training, which have involved numerous educational services throughout the country. The recognition of outdoor education within the recent Pedagogical Guidelines for the 'zero-six' integrated system (Ministerial Decree 22 November 2021, no. 334) and the Guidelines for crèches (Ministerial Decree 24 February 2022, no. 43), promoted by the National Commission for the Education and Training System (MIUR), has made the need for training even more pressing (Schenetti, Petrucci, 2023).

The environment provides learning opportunities in a rich and meaningful context and represents, together with teachers and peers, the third educator (Weyland, Galletti, 2018; Tosi, 2019); it allows access to less structured contexts and exposes children to learning opportunities that support their early development (Antonietti et all, 2022).

We know how important it is for educators and teachers to 'lay a solid intellectual, psychological, emotional, social and physical foundation for development and lifelong learning' (Samuelsson and Kaga, 2008, p. 12) by utilising all the opportunities available to them, yet international research highlights that outdoor spaces are still underutilised (Ernst and Tornabene, 2022). Intentional and conscious outdoor education requires rethinking spaces, environments, materials, but also time and relationships, offering the opportunity to make well-being and quality of life central to the aims of educational services, starting with the youngest children. For this reason, a University Advanced Training Course 'Designing Inclusive Outdoor Spaces', co-financed by ARPAE, the Emilia Romagna Region and the Municipality of Bologna, was set up in 2023 to support the training of professional figures capable of co-designing green spaces by focusing on the theme of inclusion and the rights of children and adolescents. Among the lecturers: pedagogues, psychologists, ecologists, architects, landscape architects, institutions, associations dedicated to the design of green spaces will address the topic from their own point of view with the aim of creating a framework and a common language around the planning and care of outdoor spaces, from school gardens to urban parks. The course between participative lessons and workshops welcomed 46 professionals, among which, environmental educators, pedagogical coordinators, green technicians from municipal administrations, urban planners. At each session they were involved in Thinking Routines (Ritchhart, Perkins, 2008), designed to make the thought and point of view of each one visible and shareable and to keep heuristic track of the evolution of different professional thoughts. The contribution intends to give space to those Project Works that have been able to find opportunities for realisation through interdisciplinary approaches and participatory planning with the common objective of generating fairer and more democratic educational spaces.

This paper offers a comparative reading of two projects. The first project entailed the construction and initial use of a new school, and also prompted the teachers to thoughtfully revisit their teaching practices (Weyland, 2014). The second project was conducted with an existing school (Fianchini, 2017) that had already been in use for some time, whose teachers proposed designing and constructing a new environment: an outdoor classroom, located in the school yard. The present analysis is based on the dual perspective of two distinct areas of professional expertise — education and architecture. We set out to identify the key themes that emerge from the feedback and data we collected (Preiser, Rabinowitz, White,1988), including the importance of involving the teaching staff from the initial stages of any new construction or modification project, while bearing in mind from the outset the type of use to be facilitated by the proposed new spaces. In the case of the first project, the authors of this abstract were asked – following the construction of the school and its use for an initial period of two school years – to assess how the school’s spaces were being used in practice as well as the degree of congruence between the architects’ initial intentions and the everyday school lives of the students (Cook-Sather, 2002), teachers and other school staff, based on the collection of various kinds of data and discussions with the teachers. The second project, on the other hand, was a complex process involving multiple and diverse actors that originated with the school’s internal requirement to upgrade some of its existing spaces (Dessì, Fianchini, Zuccoli, 2016; Farné, Agostini, 2015); the aim was to enhance the well-being of both students and teachers and the change introduced was found to have immediate implications for teaching practice.

Kuno Prey – first a designer, then a professor – is convinced that only those gain first-hand experience of design will be able to pass on their skills to younger people.

He was the founder of the Faculty of Design and Art at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, a school that follows the model of teaching by projects according to the principle of interdisciplinarity. Prey will illustrate and narrate his journey through a series of student projects, as well as exhibitions, competitions, objects he designed himself, and contributions from international protagonists of the design world. For the study model, Prey has designed special spaces so that these can give strong support to the project-based form of teaching, which goes beyond the usual academic schemes.