Basalt School, the 21st century method of outdoor learning

Since 2017 the team of CAN Architects researches, educates, designs and builds. The common passion of the founders, András Cseh, József Élő, Szilárd Köninger, Dávid Németh and Ádám Tátrai, is to discover, shape and experience the relationship between community and architecture. Independent of scale and function, they look for new opportunities and responsibilities in architecture, developing their own methods in the fields of architectural and participatory design (Story Design), social architecture and education (CAN EDU, Basalt School). The development of learning spaces and methodologies, and the renewal of school architecture on 21st-century pedagogical, environmental-psychological and social foundations play a prominent role in their work.

Nature is the rediscovered tool for education in the 21st century. Basalt School introduces outdoor learning into the existing educational system with its three layers: the design and building of outdoor classrooms for schools, the development of outdoor curricula of natural and built environmental education, all this through participatory design involving children, teachers and local communities. The goal of the new outdoor learning spaces and methods of Basalt School is to have users of our beautiful natural environment feel as active, creative agents, to have them discover their potential and responsibility towards nature. To be more healthy and to learn easier outside all around Hungary and worldwide. Based on architectural, pedagogic and psychological research of learning spaces and processes and our practice in school design, outdoor learning seams to be the missing link for the renewal of education, since in many cases the natural environment would serve as a more suitable and more sustainable setting for education. Our aim is the integration of conscious utilization of natural and built environments into public education. One layer of this is learning space creation through (landscape-)architecture, the construction of outdoor Basalt Classrooms. During the participatory design process we develop a common language with users, both students and teachers in a democratic school. In parallel we developed joining curricula to propose outdoor learning possibilities in all subjects and to enhance the conscious perception of the natural and built environment. Hence the schools are enabled to integrate outdoor learning into their everyday formal, informal and non-formal learning and social life too. We have worked with over 2500 students and teachers between 2021-2024, having designed and built 22 outdoor classrooms with their matching pedagogical methods. We published the Basalt School Book, organized ‘Free to Learn!’ the first Hungarian outdoor education conference and started pop-up outdoor learning days in city public parks. Basalt School received the OTP Fáy Foundation Pedagogic Innovation Award, and is shortlisted at HundrED.org, that provides us to integrate into a wide national and international network of various educators.
At the moment we are developing a 100-school project that introduces outdoor learning all around Hungary and now even abroad. Our ultimate goal is to provide all elementary schools in Hungary with their outdoor classroom by 2050.