Make an enquiry
0

My Enquiry List
(0 products)

You can tell us about any specific requirements including finishes and project requirements once you confirm your enquiry list below.

    Stay in touch

    Leave your details and we'll keep you in the loop with all the latest news and podcast releases.

    We'll need some info

    Drop us your details below for access to our CAD library.

    Scroll

    The United Kingdom has an impressive educational system, one that plays out across the country in several tiny little schools and sprawling, ancient colleges every day. From the very first days of our lives, we are encouraged to go out and explore, get down in the dirt, and to learn about the great world around us and our role in it. 

    As we age, our places of learning take on more complex designs, but the function at their very core remains the same: to give us a place to engage with the outdoors, to interact with our peers, and to learn outside the four walls of a classroom.

    For children, with impressionable minds and only uncharted territories to venture into, providing a place where they can play, rest, and learn is a fantastic opportunity: for the children, who can learn to play with their peers and see the world with fresh eyes, and for ourselves. 

    1 - Canterbury High St-29 (1)

    Outdoor furniture for young minds

    Several initiatives across the UK focus on teaching children the value of our biodiversity, and how to tend to the gardens, moors, glens, and vales that dot the countryside, ushering in a responsibility to our surroundings from the most tender age of understanding. 

    Schools can set up beehives and wildlife monitors as a separate component to their grounds, allowing for interaction underneath specific circumstances only, and while this is still largely beneficial, including biodiversity within the playground area allows for other benefits on top of the educational angle.

    2 - bespoke-akri-retaining-steel-walls-with-integrated-seating-for-Russell-gardens-in-Kensington

    We’ve written before about how everyone can benefit from the outdoors. In children, these changes are profound: they soothe, in the presence of nature. It helps calm them. A green presence in the playground boosts their immune systems. Moreover, it lets them learn about their surroundings in the best possible way: by becoming involved with the great spectrum of creatures, small and big, that share the world with them.

    Planter boxes are an excellent choice for adding a little bit of low-maintenance biodiversity in controlled environments. Sowing wildflowers, especially ones that are native to that particular area, will bring bees, birds, and butterflies to the school yard, and haul science right to your doorstep. For young, inquiring minds, the opportunity to see with their own eyes the same information that plays out in books helps cement that information – and teaches them that there are wonderful, lovely things in the world outside of their knowledge, boosting their creativity.

    DIRFT-20

    Fundamentally, it equalises the playground across spectrums and borders. It’s undeniable that there are schools which have more resources and time than others to engage in hands-on activities, and that not all school environments are created equally. Inner-city schools may not have the space and the dedicated facilities to create a wildflower patch of their own, but a planter box with an integrated bench can pull double duty as both a place to sit and a place to learn about the world. 

    pexels-kseniachernaya-8535883

    Children need to play. Outdoor furniture opportunities can provide ample extra opportunities for this, with colours and shapes to help create an environment where they can freely – and safely – interact with other children, regardless of capability. Children who struggle with mobility issues can still integrate with other young ones in an environment that caters to their specific needs.

    Our project in Holmlea Primary School, a Grade II listed building, incorporated planters within the building, and added support to the edges so that it’s far easier for the children to get around, and to play with others in a safe, supportive environment. 

    DSD5532-1

    Outdoor furniture for curious minds

    As children age, their educational journey will take them to other avenues: through to secondary school, sixth form, and university or college. As they venture forward into the wider world of academia, providing an outdoor space that can give them a place to go outside of lessons reaps the same benefits as when children are far younger: peace, an understanding of the world that goes beyond the classroom, and an opportunity to build small communities within their own environments. 

    Our outdoor furniture project at the University of East London had to work around three separate campuses with a very involved academic community that took pride in their environment. They wanted to create more opportunities for that academic community to meet outside of the lecture room, both for staff and students, and wanted a sustainable solution to the current seating challenges.

    DSD5517-1

    We installed Contor wall-top seating into the existing brick walls at Stratford campus, and added a number of Fordham five-person seating solutions at both the Docklands campus and along the riverside. The result was well-received with the Projects and Estates development team director, Liam O’Dell, saying that the newly-installed seating has created ‘vibrant spaces for students, staff, and visitors’ that allowed them to relax and enjoy their gorgeous campus.

    Similarly, our University of Greenwich project, within the school of design, wanted to bring the fourteen terraces and gardens within campus back to life, and encourage use of these areas by the students. Given the constraints, we opted for the Uniun modules, adding informal seating and planting opportunities to a beautiful, and underutilised, internal courtyard. 

    4 - Fordham-UEL-02

    Inclusive learning environments to foster lifelong education

    We never really stop learning – not as children, young adults, or as the elderly – and the educational benefits of a green environment, one that we can go to whenever we want, is a vastly underrated gift. And while, as adults, we have the freedom to venture forth where we will it, and the opportunity to travel widely, children tend to have less of this personal freedom.

    Bringing the educational aspects of biodiversity and community directly to them can help instil a sense of wonder, pride, and a valuable understanding of what it means to shepherd forward a more equal world for all.