The Patio Vivo Foundation seeks to promote active free play, positive and healthy relationships, wellbeing and contact with nature by articulating space, community and the culture of kindergarten and school playgrounds. In the following article, they describe their working methodology in their own words.
School landscape
During the 20th century school building policies were implemented in Chile to achieve universal education coverage. Building design and construction focused on formal learning activities (classrooms, libraries, sport fields), administration offices, and hygiene and food services, leaving the schoolyard (the place for informal learning) as a residual flat space between classrooms. Thus, the school landscape has not been designed to promote play nor social encounter. For this reason, schoolyards are very similar all over the country; they tend to silence their culture and territory, as well as the community’s views, which leave them barren of individual identity.
