Started by activist chef Alice Waters in Berkeley, CA, the Edible Schoolyard Project integrates organic gardening and cooking into public school curricula. Since 2009, WORKac has worked to bring Edible Schoolyards to New York City students. 

Architectural learning tools, WORKac’s designs for Edible Schoolyard NYC engage a child’s sense of curiosity through material and form, encouraging children to think about the way the building, its systems and the surrounding garden work together, and through that, to reconsider their own relationship to the environment.

At P.S. 216, a half acre of parking lot was transformed into a vibrant teaching garden. The building is composed of three interconnected programs expressed as separate parts: the blue rubber “systems wall” that reveals the sustainable infrastructure, including the cistern for the water reclamation system; the “decorated shed” of the kitchen classroom and offices, and a greenhouse that allows gardening classes to continue throughout the year.