Blending spaces: integrating nature into educational design

With the urgency to address climate change and the alarming 69% decline in global biodiversity, we are compelled to rethink how we design learning spaces. At the same time, educational institutions are increasingly focused on digitalization, further disconnecting us from nature.

It’s essential to address these issues together. Finding design solutions that enable learning spaces to adapt to social and environmental changes, where people thrive, can sometimes be found in plain sight – in nature. At Henning Larsen, we use nature as a co-pilot, creating spaces that generate inspiration, creativity, and a feeling of community. Here, I explore three takeaways for integrating natural elements into our designs.

Nature as our teacher

The most efficient way to learn from nature is to mimic it. Biomimicry is about learning from nature’s processes and translating these to the design and creation of efficient solutions, extending beyond what nature looks and feels like. The building industry accounts for 30% of total global waste, while nature operates on a zero-waste principle, where waste is a resource, continuously recycled in a circular system. This concept, which seems foreign from an industry perspective, is a constant reality in nature. Why should it be impossible for us?

At Feldballe School, circularity is at the center of the project, selecting locally sourced, natural, and bio-based materials to reduce the carbon footprint, and improve the indoor climate quality for the students.

The ventilation system combines cassettes fitted with eelgrass and a skylight window. The eelgrass filters dust and noise pollutants while the skylight is equipped with sensors to effectively release the accumulated CO₂ from the classroom, creating a clean and breathable indoor environment for students and teachers. Combining timber and clay for the interior structure provides insulation and adds an extra element of breathability from the wood. These low-carbon emitting and high-carbon storing materials are crucial in addressing our immediate environmental needs, while also enhancing the wellbeing benefits in learning spaces by creating healthier, more sustainable environments for students.

Nature is also often inspirational, with the surrounding landscape informing the designs of our projects. This is the case with Peterhead Community Campus, a learning space with direct access to the outdoors, where the environment actively shapes how the school functions and interacts with students and teachers – bridging the community and the local landscape. By integrating outdoor spaces, we promote an active lifestyle, supporting the physical and mental wellbeing of students. In a time where learning increasingly relies on digital tools, incorporating natural elements is essential for students to create social connections and maintain a balanced campus life.

Bringing the experience of nature, indoors

In countries like Australia, where rising temperatures often limit outdoor learning, our designs must reimagine indoor spaces to mimic nature's sensory experience – its textures, colors, calming presence.

Our design for the Peter Coaldrake Education Precinct at the Queensland University of Technology was driven by our curiosity of intersecting nature, student wellbeing and education. Nature plays an integral role in reducing students’ stress by nearly 30% , enhancing focus by 20%, and improving overall wellbeing - informing our biophilic approach for the new campus hub. The atrium, a central point of the building, features natural light and suspended greenery that mimic the outdoors, effectively blurring the lines between the interior and exterior environments. To further emulate nature’s calming effect, the interior space is complemented by a bird noise soundscape, adding to the sensory experience. By integrating natural elements into learning spaces, we create environments where students feel and perform better, ultimately improving academic outcomes for the institution.

Learning beyond four walls

Our designs ensure that learning is not solely confined to a classroom. The surrounding landscape of learning environments also serves as an educational space for students and the broader community, teaching visitors about the workings of nature.

Often, being in nature is the best way to learn about it.

In Singapore’s new Bidadari housing estate is nestled Alkaff Lake. The 1.8-hectare lake serves as a retention pond that temporarily holds stormwater runoff and slows down the flow to the downstream drainage system during heavy rains and provide a space for visitors to spend time outdoors and play with water during dry weather. Meshing design elements to support nature’s processes, right at the community’s doorstep, creates a space where the public can both enjoy and learn about nature.

Our learnings from having nature as our guiding force have showed us that it’s processes can be applied to our designs, we just need to be looking in the right places. By mimicking nature, we reduce our environmental impact, enhance our spaces, and create designs that speak to all our senses. We are step by step handing over our learnings and responsibility to the next generation, and it starts by providing spaces that spark a sense of curiosity for nature.