This article was taken from the March 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This is the "Farming Kindergarten", a school built by Vietnamese architecture firm Vo Trong Nghia to bring 500 children closer to nature. "In Vietnam, many people are now quitting farming and moving to an urban area," says Masaaki Iwamoto, principle architect on the project. "But we wanted children to have their own vegetable gardens." The garden on the roof of the school, in Dong Nai province, currently grows crops including spinach, mustard greens and sweet potatoes. A shoe factory next door conveniently provides waste water, which is recycled for the school's irrigation and sanitation needs, meaning it uses 40 per cent less water than the average kindergarten. Ventilation across the site is boosted by the school's design -- with three grassy courtyards and narrow 10m-wide walls creating a three-leaf-clover-shaped loop, thus cutting energy consumption. "We simulated the wind flow using computational algorithms,"says Iwamoto. "Despite no air conditioning, the classrooms are very cool, even in the tropical weather."
The kindergarten is primarily solar-powered -- another lesson for the children, alongside the maintenance of the garden. "We intentionally designed many features in plain view," says Iwamoto.
The green-minded architecture firm is expanding its reach to higher education buildings, and will finish its tree-covered FPT University building in Hanoi this year. Another building for the Ho Chi Minh campus is in the design stages, but will echo its garden rooftop approach. Green power to the children.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
