A landscape designed from a child’s point of view, where play, ecology, and learning become one.
Groundworks Office is creating a two-acre landscape for Park Side Elementary that treats the outdoors as an extension of the classroom. Designed for the school’s youngest learners, the landscape turns the campus into a series of small ecosystems where children can run, dig, climb, gather, garden, explore, and experience the natural world firsthand.
Organized as Forest, Valley, and Beach, each landscape offers a different relationship to nature and a different kind of play. The Forest provides shade, discovery, and quieter moments; the Valley opens into sunny spaces for movement and active play; and the Beach introduces sand, water, and the freedom to get a little messy. Together, these environments form a landscape that changes in character while remaining connected as one continuous garden.
The landscape is woven directly into the architecture, with classrooms opening toward gardens, covered outdoor learning areas, and play spaces. Rather than separating learning from recreation—or buildings from landscape—the campus allows children to move naturally between them.
At its heart, the project is about making ecology tangible at a very young age. Plants, water, soil, habitat, seasons, and play become part of everyday school life, creating a landscape that isn't simply something children look at, but something they can inhabit, manipulate, and learn from.
Organized as Forest, Valley, and Beach, each landscape offers a different relationship to nature and a different kind of play. The Forest provides shade, discovery, and quieter moments; the Valley opens into sunny spaces for movement and active play; and the Beach introduces sand, water, and the freedom to get a little messy. Together, these environments form a landscape that changes in character while remaining connected as one continuous garden.
The landscape is woven directly into the architecture, with classrooms opening toward gardens, covered outdoor learning areas, and play spaces. Rather than separating learning from recreation—or buildings from landscape—the campus allows children to move naturally between them.
At its heart, the project is about making ecology tangible at a very young age. Plants, water, soil, habitat, seasons, and play become part of everyday school life, creating a landscape that isn't simply something children look at, but something they can inhabit, manipulate, and learn from.