School Rest Zone Connected to Nature (Slovakia)

Oddychová zóna školy spojená s prírodou

Slovakia · Team “Traja statoční” (The Three Valiant Ones) · Secondary Vocational School of Trade and Services, Trnava · mentor Zdenka Hecková

This project came out of a straightforward observation from three students at a Trnava vocational school with an attached dormitory: there was nowhere on the school grounds to actually decompress. Between back-to-back classes and dorm life, students had no outdoor space to reset before the next lesson — so the team, calling themselves “Traja statoční,” set out to build one, using their project canvas, dated 30 March 2026, to define exactly who it was for and what it needed to achieve.

The design combines a pallet-seating area under a pergola with a small herb garden — also built from reclaimed pallets — planted with culinary herbs the school's own students can use in their food-prep classes. Old barrels were repurposed into planters, water butts, and waste-sorting bins. An insect hotel and several bird houses, built from scrap tin and wood, sit alongside newly planted trees, shrubs, and a stone dry-creek flower bed. The roughly €1,500 budget went almost entirely into materials — reclaimed pallets, paint and wood oil, soil, and about 30 new trees and shrubs.

The team measured success in a very concrete way: a student survey asking whether people would actually use the finished space, with a target of 60% saying yes. Beyond that, the new trees are doing real work — shade and cooling in summer, some noise reduction, and better air quality right where students need to concentrate — while the insect hotel and bird houses bring some habitat back to a schoolyard boxed in by apartment blocks. The team built the project to last at least ten years, with regular upkeep built into the plan from the start rather than left for later.