In Finding the STEM Among the Stems, year 5 and 6 students at Lansdowne Crescent Primary School will be guided through an award-winning landscape architecture project on the grounds of their school.

Good design by its nature, goes unnoticed. In an event led by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, students will be guided through the space they thought they knew, slowly revealing the hidden elements of science, technology and maths.

Key principles of biodiversity will be explored, as well as smart irrigation techniques, drainage and spatial design that combine to make a great place that support a healthy school community and a sustainable planet.

About the school, and the project design: 

Lansdowne Crescent Primary School is an inner urban primary school in Hobart. A c1900s building housing administration and upper primary is situated at the top of the site and early childhood classrooms and a hall are at the lower end of the site, a height difference of nineteen metres in total. Four new classrooms for middle primary, are located roughly in the middle of the site. An alternative path was developed, connecting the school physically and socially from top to bottom. The path offers changing views, textures, directions, and is purposely playful. Designer, Susan Small Landscape Architect, is congratulated for a well-crafted response to the task of connecting a dispersed set of outdoor rooms across a topographically challenged site with multiple buildings. Along a spine of linked vignettes suited to play, teaching and reflection that climbs 19 metres through the campus, the team has used natural building materials, varying textures and planting for habitat in a captivatingly artful and playful manner.