China. A climbing school inside a forest

Chinese studio unarchitecte has completed a floating playground within the trees, with white nets that form a second topography.

Lying in mountains with a lake by side, the School Affiliated to Luofu Mountain Chinese Classics Institute in Guangdong province covers an area of over a hundred acres. Inside of the school, hundreds of evergreen trees flourish in a tiny valley. A forest can become a place for children to return to nature, to explore and to think, to sweat and to sit still alone. Building a climbing system, unarchitecte connects all the trees in the valley by hundreds of diverse white triangle nets to constitute a combination of various topological folding surfaces like a “white sea” for children to swim carefree.

No tree was cut down during the construction except those already withered. In the basic climbing system, every side of triangle nets is fixed on a tree by solid steel wire ropes with sleepers in order to protect the plants. When the gap between boles was too wide or the bole was not strong enough, columns were set to serve as a supplemental support posts. To some extent, the whole forest is a unit, with a second safety net under the higher system.