Transforming a school building façade into a vibrant jungle experience!
While designing the facade, an effort was made to create an atmosphere that inspires and stimulates the kids mentally. The theme is interesting to the child, and it reinforces both rational thinking, and creativity. In order to achieve this goal, a fun science based theme, which presents a topic in the natural world in an exciting manner, complete with Hi-tech lighting and sound effects has been put up.
The jungle is a dark and mysterious place, full of dense shrubs, towering trees, and shadows within which a number of strange animals could be lurking. It is a place of predators and prey. It is a place of exciting adventure. It is also a place that is full of opportunity for learning more about animals, plants, and nature in general. If presented in the right way, a jungle-themed facade can be an engaging, inspiring project that will encourage the children to develop a long term love of learning and nature.
Accent tropical decor themes by turning bare walls into a forests experience, is a very exciting proposition for kids, where the Child’s world transforms into a miniature jungle where he or she can let creativity run wild and enjoy endless animal adventures.
The theme followed for the facade of the building is the different layers of the jungle, with a combination of the two zones the desert zone and the snow land zone. Basically the facade is divided into four layers, where we have tried to incorporate all the different birds, animals, trees of the layers with a temperature chart to give a wholesome idea to the children with regard to how much sunlight each layer receives. The four layers consist of:
Emergent
The canopy trees are tall, but some species grow even taller until they stick right out above the canopy. These are called ‘emergent’ and can reach almost 90 meters in height. Up here they don’t have to compete with other trees for light, but they are exposed to the high winds that lash the canopy during tropical storms.
Canopy
Suspended 40meters above the ground is the canopy - a belt of tree crowns supported by forest tree trunks. This is the most productive and diverse habitat on Earth - perhaps 40% of the world’s species spends their lives among its branches. The canopy’s function is to photosynthesize. Canopy trees arrange their leaves to soak up as much of the sunlight as possible and supply them with a continuous stream of water and nutrients from the soil far below, so that the process is uninterrupted from dawn to dusk.
Understory
Beneath the canopy is a layer of trees adapted to living on the slim pickings of light that manage to penetrate the tree crowns above. These are mainly palms and slender, shade-tolerant trees, but amongst them are millions of canopy tree saplings. The saplings can survive for decades in the shade, waiting for a break in the canopy and a chance to join their relatives in the sunlight. The understory may appear to be puny in comparison to the canopy layer, but it still extends to 20m above the ground, as high as a typical oak forest. Down at the base of the enormous canopy trees is the forest floor. This is a dark, still and extremely humid world, alive in a way that’s difficult to perceive. The inhabitants here have to eke out a living from the leftovers that fall from above - specks of light, dead leaves and over-ripe fruits. Most of them are involved in decomposing the leaf litter. Termites, soil mites, bacteria and fungi run an efficient recycling plant that returns the nutrients to the soil almost as fast as they arrive. Also there is
interactivity in form of caves where the children can experience the animals by touching them.
Forest Floor
There are also marine animals which are moulded into 3D forms, for the children to understand how these animals look or they are able to identify the size of the animal in reference to human height and also to identify different habitats.
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Barry O'Brien (Educationist)
"Our country is looking back to draw strength from its roots and looking ahead to compete with anyone in the world or internationally. I am sure Indus Valley World school would live upto this expectation"
