Hayley Costello

Outdated design strategies in American schoolyards and historic land-based inequities continue to disproportionately burden BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) communities. At Park Avenue Elementary School, this is especially pronounced: while asphalt was used during cleanup efforts to address the site's history as an unregulated dump, this surface merely masks deeper issues rather than fully remediating the land. With the children, and all occupants of the land in mind, this design transforms the schoolyard from an anthropogenic mess into a wild (+ peaceful) classroom, in nature.