Buffalo Public School 90 Learning Courtyard, Joy Kuebler

The BPS 90 courtyard is featured in the inaugural newsletter of the American Society for Landscape Architecture's recently established "Professional Practice Network devoted to Children’s Outdoor Environments" (such an unwieldy title, but join anyway if you're an ASLA member!).

It features a curriculum-based approach, which should warm the hearts of administrators everywhere, with gathering spaces specifically designed for science, math, music, art, and geography/geology, all connected within a varying topography by a circuit walk.

A 6 inch deep, 8 inch wide water channel flows down a gentle slope through the landscape, traversed by bridges where it intersects the circuit walk and providing watery opportunities for playing Pooh sticks, damming the stream, racing rubber ducks. 

Natural elements of logs, mounds and boulders are interspersed with concrete areas that allow for hard surface activities like jumping rope, riding tricycles and bouncing balls.  I especially like the way the plant materials are keyed to the curriculum elements:  the "music" area is planted with varieties that make sound in the wind, attract singing insects and birds or which can be used to make instruments, and the "art" space has plants whose petals or berries can be used to make dyes or inks.

The "math" classroom uses unit-cell pavings to show ratios and proportions and includes raised planters for counting seeds and measuring growth, and the "science" area has large mounds of earth that can be used for velocity measurements, and a wider water channel for experimentation.

Images from Joy Kuebler's website.