| Abstract: | Health education is concerned with improving people's physicalconstitution. There is no doubt that it is important to enlightenchildren on problems of drug abuse, to teach them how to nourishthemselves and to dress in a healthy way, to do sports and notto smoke. What has been neglected so far, however, is the drawingof people's attention to the unwholesome working and learningconditions to which children and adolescents are exposed atnursery school, and later on, at school and university, andwhich adults experience all day long at their place of work. The creation of a wholesome environment for working and learningin is a need which ought to be investigated thoroughly and putinto practice over the next decade. As long as children andadolescents in particular are forced to live and to learn inconcrete bunkers under artificial light and in rooms coveredin plastic, as long as all school playgrounds are sealed inasphalt up to the horizon so that any physical contact withnature is made impossible, we must not be surprised that childrenconsider school to be boring, monotonous and dull. Nor mustwe be surprised if vandalism, discontentment and an inabilityto concentrate, are on the increase: these are the symptomsof such sterile educational surroundings. The author has been researching the side-effects of brutal designin school architecture for many years; he has managed a projectinvolving young unemployed people for a couple of years. Theproject group has made it its business to transform asphalt-sealedareas and formerly sterile lawns–all part of the universitysurroundings–into new ecological landscapes. Consideredin social terms, it will be shown how the project is an artisticprocess which develops the creative abilities of its membersand gives them a new sense of identity. These new grounds are models which could inspire other peopleto create something similar. The models ought to offer an incentivefor future clinics, schools, nursery schoob and other publicareas to create sound new places of work and learning. |
