Conference Program

The relationship between educational practices, architecture and open spaces has been explored for more than a century. Well-known pedagogical approaches developed by Froebel, Montessori, Pizzigoni and Steiner emphasized the importance of nature and outdoor environments in supporting children’s cognitive, physical and social development, opening a broader reflection on the spatial dimension of learning. During the twentieth century, this debate intensified with the spread of the principles of the modern movement and influenced the architectural and pedagogical discourse on school design in the post-war period (Rogers, 1960; Buzzi and Polo, 1960).

Despite these theoretical advancements and the typological evolution of school complexes, the current situation in Italy is still characterized by a widespread condition of poor-quality school open spaces. Schoolyards are often poorly integrated with indoor environments and rarely connected with pedagogical programmes, limiting their potential as places for learning, social interaction and well-being. The Covid-19 pandemic made these shortcomings even more evident, reopening the debate on the importance of outdoor environments within educational systems and on the role that school open spaces can play in supporting more resilient forms of education and urban life (Sabbadini et al., 2011; Mirchandani and Wright, 2015; Fianchini, 2017; Dessì and Piazza, 2020; Belloni and Manganaro, 2022).

In this context, school open spaces can be reconsidered as strategic components of broader socio-ecological infrastructures. Rather than residual areas within school complexes, they can become catalysts for ecosystem services, environmental awareness and active learning practices, contributing to the construction of educational landscapes where formal, informal and experiential learning processes intersect.

The paper discusses the case of the city of Savona, where the Territorial Strategy for Sustainable Urban Development co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund identified school open spaces as key components of a broader urban regeneration strategy.

Starting from an integrated urban, environmental and socio-economic analysis that involved local stakeholders and civil society, the strategy proposes a reorganization of public spaces and urban heritage through a constellation of punctual landscape interventions aimed at activating a socio-ecological network capable of mitigating environmental and social vulnerabilities while strengthening territorial resilience.

Within this framework, two pilot projects – one located in a central school and the other in a peripheral neighbourhood – explore the transformation of schoolyards into biodiversity gardens and environmental awareness spaces for active learning, play and social interaction, while fostering their integration with surrounding public spaces and ecological networks.

By re-signifying schoolyards as civic nodes and experiential learning environments, the project reframes schools as socio-ecological infrastructures within the urban landscape. The paper discusses the methodological approach underlying this process and identifies key landscape design criteria addressing aesthetic-formal, ecological-environmental and pedagogical-functional dimensions, contributing to the broader debate on educational landscapes and resilient urban environments.