The Nature of Design: Engaging Natural Elements in School Environments
School environments are often the primary location where students and teachers spend time outside the home. Most states in the U.S. require 180 instructional days per year, which equals more than 1,000 hours in the building annually for students.
With so much time spent in these environments, it seems logical that education design should support both learning and wellness. Biophilic design stands out as a powerful framework that can address both of these needs simultaneously.
Integrating biophilic design strategies that foreground natural materials and patterns can help students and teachers feel a connection to the outside world, enhancing classroom learning and wellness outcomes. Unfortunately, that is not what every school facility is currently able to deliver.
Multistudio analyzes international data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to study large scale trends in education worldwide. Using their data from nearly 300,000 teachers around the world, we found that 1 in 3 teachers in the United States report problems in their instruction resulting from a lack of access to nature (Fig. 1).
Inadequate connection to nature has far-reaching implications, with statistical relationships extending to social and emotional development for students and job satisfaction for teachers.
Additionally, recent research led by the Institute of Landscape Development, Recreation and Conservation Planning in Vienna showed that the restorative effects of school breaks may actually be stronger in a built environment with biophilic connections than in outdoor public green spaces. Students in their study reported the positive benefits of natural elements may be more impactful when they also have the thermal comfort and air quality of a school facility, which protected them from things like traffic noise and pollen.
Multistudio kicked off the design process for a new elementary school in Kansas City, Kansas, (familiarly called “KCK”) by engaging with students, teachers, school staff, and the local neighborhood. The new building will bring together students from two smaller, aging elementary schools.
During feedback sessions, students and teachers expressed excitement for updated facilities that would meet their needs for both capacity and performance, but it was also a project priority to design for a unified community rooted in a shared sense of place in KCK.
A collaborative engagement process that included students bringing in artifacts from their natural world led to a shared vision for the project as a village of treehouses.
The treehouse village concept allows students to do more than see nature — moving through the space helps them feel like they are in nature. Senior Project Manager Harriet Grindel shared the thought process behind integrating biophilic design into the new school building.
“Cultivating a connection to nature is more than a framed view," she explained. "We were intentional in our choices for color palettes and materials throughout the interior to reinforce the feeling of a treehouse community.”
The project’s authentic color palette expresses nature’s rhythm and seasonality. During the design process, the team researched leaf senescence (the way leaves change color and drop in the fall) to create a color palette based on that natural process.
The idea of a treehouse village as the project’s foundational narrative thread embodies the creative, personal experience of a treehouse embedded within a larger natural world. The project team organized the new school’s grade levels around treehouse alcoves that provide visual connections to the protected courtyard outside.
Larger treehouses on the public facing sides of the facility house more public activities like common spaces and the art program. The treehouse approach also brings ample natural light into the shared learning spaces while simultaneously managing potential distractions from the windows.
Harriet described the importance of authenticity in that design process.
“Making a connection to nature is not about a single moment in time. Capturing the rhythm and feeling of nature in every part of the building blurs the lines between what feels built and what feels natural.”
This holistic approach to the integration of nature allows the Kansas City district to pursue high performance for wellness and human connection simultaneously, leading to the return on their facility investment the community both expects and deserves.
