Tree House is a primary school play structure. It was designed and constructed with students from London Metropolitan University’s Department of Architecture. The project commenced with a series of workshops, in which the children of the school were immersed into their own physical environment, through story telling, drawing, modelling (including a pop-up model of the school) and physical activities. These experiences focused investigations onto the single piece of nature within the hard-surfaced urban playground, a fenced off tree whose roots had broken up the tarmac surface of the playground.

 

Tree House overcomes this and allows children to explore the physical scale and sensations of the tree, through spaces which adjust seasonally and with the weather. Although small, these spaces are fantastical and story-like; a dark shadowy room around the trunk, a winding stair with a rope hand-rail up into a child height space defined by the tree’s canopy. The second year architecture students were exposed to all stages of the project, from design, to fund-raising, to construction. In this way it offered them an appreciation of regulation, craft and construction, at an early stage in their professional lives.