As the newest addition to Amsterdam’s cultural practice of integrated green education, Nature and Environment Learning Centre is an adorable piece of infrastructure. All primary school children of Amsterdam, as a state policy, are allotted their own little patch of land (called the 6m2 garden) which they have to vegetate and tend to while also attending nature and environment classes spread at different locations throughout the city, with the obvious aim of inculcating an early awareness of and love for their natural surroundings. Two temporary shelters in Heggerankweg where one such nature school is conducted have recently been replaced by a remarkable building designed by architects at Bureau SLA, which itself embodies the very ideals of eco-sensitivity that will be imparted on its premises.

Nature and Environment Learning Centre, an obviously energy neutral set-up, has a striking yet sleek visual form that peeps stylishly out from its verdant vegetated site. The unusual form of the building is actually an exercise intended at maximising the climatic advantage. The ridge of the roof is oriented along the diagonal (the site’s east-west axis!) of the building’s rectangular plan to create a precise south facing slope for the solar collectors on it to maximise efficiency. Further visual sleekness is achieved by the repetitive pattern of the cladding boards on the bitumen coated roof and western wall in blocks of three, which are  matched in size with the solar panels, a detail that allows the panels to appear flush with the roof surface for a neat finish. 

Another quaint energy efficient tool employed here are the passive heating systems called Trombe walls erected in front of some south facing windows. These are concrete walls that get heated and in turn, heat the air allowed to pass from below them to a gap between the wall and the louvered window, which opens to let in the fresh heated air and keep the interiors warm. On warm days, not opening these Trombe wall windows ensures a cooler interior. The northern windows are essentially full length traditional glazing interspersed with white lacquered operable shutters. The building being located at the entrance of the site allows its largely symmetrical floor plan to create a view of these of school children’s gardens at the rear through the glass of the open central hallway.  

The children get to experience the energy neutrality of their school in real time through all these arrangements; they even get a peek at the solar panels at the roof’s lowest point! Even the little concave recesses made on the Trombe walls to increase the area of heat absorption are arranged in a pattern that can be read in Braille as Dutch nature poetry. More endearing details like the 21 designer bird houses – 20 for swifts and 1 for a bat – adorning the eastern exterior attempt to include a lesson on co-existence with animals in the ‘nature narrative’ of this unique school.

What appears like a curvaceous castle trapped inside a silvery cage is actually the Cairns Institute of tropical research at the James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. Nestled in the lap of rain-forested slopes in a tropical climate, the institute caters to researchers handling regional knowledge and information eco-systems.

The designers Woods Bagot and RPA Architects have created a campus that caters to the researchers’ infrastructural needs with state-of-the-art technology while keeping them stimulated by a direct connect with the subjects of their field through a vertical web of eco-systems which would surround them. Yes, the silver cage exterior is actually the outermost layer of a multi-layered façade intended to help in passive climatic control within the building. The silver ‘trellis’ is an evolutionary skin that is intended to be covered in various local varieties of greens that will grow on it, helping it merge into its surrounding landscape. Apart from controlling solar gain and creating some pleasing aesthetics, this trellis will be a living laboratory for the researchers when it houses a variety of ecological systems within itself.

It surely is thrilling to explore and experience how the architecture of these ecological study institutions becomes a medium of articulation of the purpose for which they exist.