Green towers for learning in India
Architecture studio Nudes, with its particular focus on sustainability, has won the design competition for a new educational facility in Pune, India.
Forest School will consist of two conjoined six-storey, cylindrical towers wrapped in greenery, and featuring a looped rooftop cycling track.
One of Forest School’s two towers.
Pune, just a three-hour drive from Mumbai, has seen marked urban growth in the past 10 years. Now, as the eighth most populous city in India, it is suffering from deteriorating air quality. One 2018 study showed that air pollution in Pune is four times higher than the World Health Organisation’s safe standard.
Forest School’s green living wall will purify the air, removing pollutants via phytoremediation. At 32-metres high, and with plants at every level, the school’s leaves will keep the building naturally cool, and provide shade and a noise buffer.
Construction was due to start this year.
Stepped balconies covered in plants form the entire building’s exterior, creating a vertical forest facade, and a service track will be accessible from each floor so that horticulturalists can access and maintain the plants. Plants at ground level can be cared for by students.
The school will be for children from preschool through to age 18, and Nudes hopes their design will provide a healthy school environment and learning opportunities about nature and climate change.
Forest School’s green living wall will purify the air, removing pollutants via phytoremediation.
Forest School’s approximately two-and-a-half-acre site features a swimming pool and tennis courts at basement level, and the cycle track will create two bridges between the towers, with one raised over the other to form an endless circuit. This track will be a welcome relief for a city starved of pedestrian walkways and cycle facilities.
Construction of the school has been delayed until this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Forest School will consist of two conjoined six-storey, cylindrical towers wrapped in greenery, and featuring a looped rooftop cycling track.