Prince Charles’ Environmental Education Treehouse Center
by Cate Trotter
Prince Charles has been invited to open the New Forest Study Centre’s new educational treehouse, a sustainable building that places city kids right in the middle of nature. The Countryside Education Trust (CET) has commissioned two classrooms-on-stilts to be built, enabling 10,000 children a year to learn about rural life – important when you learn that one million children in the UK have never visited the countryside.
The treehouse was designed by 22-year-old Samantha Sherwood of Oxford Brookes University, who won a student design competition open to five South Eastern architecture schools. She’s been working closely with Novoe Ltd and treehouse specialists Blue Forest Ltd to develop her plans into a workable solution, with additional advice from sustainable environmental consultancy XCO2. Samantha’s design features a biomass boiler, solar panels, rainwater collection and a glass roof. A walkway suspended 16 feet from the ground will enable students to move from one classroom to the other. Only the toilet block and facilities office will be located on the ground.
The new centre replaces two dilapidated classrooms that the centre acquired second-hand. If the Prince accepts, he’ll open the centre when it is completed in autumn 2008. (Via Southern Daily Echo)
+ Countryside Education Trust (CET)
+ View the project’s Flickr page
Get Inhabitat Email
