In an age where the built environment and technological advancements are taking precedence over environmental concerns and the natural world, how do we raise children who are rooted in nature and ready for an AI-driven future? This post explores biophilic design and AI literacy, showing how climate-smart schools can breathe, adapt, and inspire. From learning under shade structures that mimic flower petals to prompting AI like nature detectives, children are not just observing the world, they’re shaping its future. Discover how tomorrow’s environmental innovators are growing today, one thoughtful question at a time.
In a world where concrete increasingly replaces grass and windows substitute for vast open skies, nurturing children’s connection to nature might seem impossible. This challenge becomes even more stark when we consider the reality of many schools today, ageing buildings with poor ventilation, cramped classrooms with fluorescent lighting, and outdoor spaces that consist of little more than concrete playgrounds. Many of these educational environments, particularly in the UK, where poor buildings still house 21st-century learning, are places where most adults would struggle to feel comfortable, let alone inspired.
Yet even in urban hearts, we can, and must, help young minds grow deep roots in the natural world. Part of the solution lies at the intersection of two powerful forces: biophilic design and artificial intelligence literacy.
Beyond Green Walls: Schools That Breathe and Adapt
Imagine a school that responds to the weather like a living organism. Its walls adjust ventilation like forest canopies responding to temperature changes. Solar panels track the sun with sunflower precision. Playground shade structures open and close like flower petals, sensing approaching storms or blazing heat.
This is not science fiction—it’s the emerging reality of climate-smart biophilic design. In these environments, children don’t merely observe nature’s ingenious solutions; they have the unique opportunity to understand, explore, and build upon these designs and ideas. Through this hands-on engagement, they may also develop a deeper awareness of the importance of environmental stewardship, both in urban spaces and the natural world.
Green spaces within these adaptive schools send a powerful message since even in dense urban environments, nature belongs. Children deserve access to wildness, wonder, and worms in the soil. Whether sunny or stormy, crisp or sweltering, students can engage daily with natural systems that respond and adapt around them.
AI as the Sixth Essential Part of STEAM
Just as we taught previous generations to read books, we should now teach children to “read” and communicate with artificial intelligence. This represents more than passive tool use, it’s about developing the sophisticated questioning skills that will define their future success.
Consider this reality, today’s primary school students will enter careers that don’t yet exist, solving climate challenges we’re only beginning to understand. Those who master AI collaboration, who learn to ask precise, creative, and ethically-grounded questions, will be positioned to discover breakthrough solutions. (You can download Ethical Guidelines on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in teaching and learning for Educators on the European Commission website.
AI prompting could become the sixth essential part alongside Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics, creating what we might call STEAM AI education.
The STEAM AI Framework in Practice
In climate-resilient biophilic schools, every subject becomes an opportunity for sophisticated AI collaboration where nature-inspired solutions can be explored and used as a fantastic and powerful tool for innovative ideas.
Science + AI: Students observe penguin colonies rotating positions to share warmth, then prompt AI: “Model how penguin huddle dynamics could inform flexible classroom furniture that helps students stay comfortable during temperature fluctuations.”
Technology + AI: Children collaborate with AI to design sensor networks for living walls: “Help me code a system that adjusts irrigation based on weather forecasts and stress indicators from our classroom plants.”
Engineering + AI: Students optimise playground structures with AI assistance: “How would a baobab tree’s branching pattern perform as a climbing structure providing maximum cooling during heat waves?”
Arts + AI: Creative prompting visualises adaptive spaces: “Generate concepts for moveable art installations that respond to weather changes, tracking sunlight throughout our school day as flowers do.”
Mathematics + AI: Young mathematicians tackle real building challenges: “Calculate the optimal window-to-wall ratio for comfort in both 40°C summers and unexpected -10°C cold snaps, showing energy costs across a full year.”
The most crucial skill is not technical; instead, it’s conversational. Children are natural question-askers, but they need guidance to craft inquiries that unlock AI’s potential while avoiding its pitfalls.
The “Nature Detective” Approach
Climate-smart classrooms teach children to prompt AI like scientists studying the natural world:
- Observe First: “I noticed the leaves on our classroom green wall curl up on hot days…”
- Wonder specifically: “How might this leaf-curling behaviour inspire automatic window shades?”
- Test and Iterate: “Show me three different mechanisms that could make this work without electricity.”
- Consider Consequences: “What would happen if these shades failed during a heat wave, and how could we build in backup systems?”
Building Ethical AI Habits Early
Children learn to question not just “how” but “should we”:
- “Help me understand both benefits and potential problems with this design.”
- “Who might be affected if we implement this solution school-wide?”
- “What would happen to local wildlife if every school adopted this approach?”
Climate Resilience as a Teaching Tool
Schools designed for climate extremes become living laboratories where children witness adaptation in real time. When their building’s exterior reconfigures like a pine cone responding to humidity, students learn to ask similarly adaptive questions of AI.
This environmental responsiveness teaches crucial 21st-century skills: comfort with uncertainty and change. Students discover that the best questions often begin with “What if conditions change?” or “How might we prepare for scenarios we have not considered?”
The building itself becomes a teacher, demonstrating that successful systems must be flexible, responsive, and designed for conditions beyond current experience.
Preparing Minds for an AI-Integrated Future
By 2035, today’s primary students will enter workplaces where AI collaboration is as fundamental as email today. Unlike passive tool use, effective AI prompting requires critical thinking, creativity, and ethical reasoning. These are skills that develop best through hands-on exploration in rich, responsive learning environments.
In climate-smart biophilic classrooms, every interaction with living building systems teaches students to think like natural systems: adaptably, interconnectedly, and endlessly innovatively. When they apply this wisdom to AI collaboration, they’re not just preparing for future careers, they’re developing thinking skills to address the climate challenges that will define their generation. Biophilic design is often associated with indoor spaces, but it can also be used for designing outdoor spaces.
The Seeds of Tomorrow
The children learning in walls that breathe like trees, playing under shade structures inspired by leaf patterns, and collaborating with AI to decode nature’s climate solutions are developing more than academic skills. They’re cultivating the creative questioning abilities that could unlock humanity’s next breakthrough in sustainable living.
These students become researchers in their own right, with every classroom serving as a laboratory and every question planted as a seed of innovation for our climate-resilient future.
As we design these climate-smart learning environments, we’re not just building schools, instead, we’re nurturing the minds that will transform how humanity lives with our changing planet. At the heart of this transformation lies a deceptively simple skill: knowing how to ask the right questions of both nature and artificial intelligence.
In this new educational paradigm, we’re growing tomorrow’s climate innovators, one thoughtful question at a time.
Design Challenge: Become a Young Nature Designer!
Ready to put these ideas into action? Here’s your mission: design a biophilic garden for a school or nursery that helps children play, learn, and feel deeply connected to the natural world—even in the heart of a bustling city.
Your Design Goals
Create a garden space that includes:
A Space to Play and Move: Areas where children can run, chase, climb, and explore freely, letting their bodies engage with natural textures and terrains.
A Learning Laboratory: Think vegetable patches where kids can watch seeds transform into food, or science zones where they can observe insects, track weather patterns, or study plant growth cycles.
A Peaceful Retreat: Quiet corners where children can rest, read, or even enjoy lunch surrounded by the calming presence of green growing things.
Seasonal Transformation: Choose plants, trees, herbs, and flowers that change throughout the year, teaching children about natural cycles and the beauty of impermanence.
Nature-Inspired Design: This is where biomimicry comes alive! Include something that uses natural shapes, patterns, or problem-solving strategies from the living world.
Your Design Process
Step 1: Explore and Imagine. Begin by thinking about gardens, parks, or natural spaces you’ve experienced. What captured your attention? Was it the sound of rustling leaves, the sweet scent of flowers, the vibrant colours of changing seasons, or the texture of bark under your fingers? Let these sensory memories guide your vision.
Step 2: Sketch Your Dream. Draw your ideal school garden, whether it’s a rooftop oasis or a transformed schoolyard. Label distinct areas for play, rest, growing, and exploration. Include at least three different types of plants or trees, thinking about how they’ll create different experiences throughout the year.
Step 3: Add Biomimicry Magic. Here’s where nature becomes your teacher. How do animals, plants, or entire ecosystems solve problems? Could you design a bench shaped like a giant leaf that collects rainwater in its curves? A climbing structure inspired by the branching patterns of trees? A water collection system that mimics how desert cacti gather moisture? Let nature’s 3.8 billion years of research and development inspire your innovations.
Step 4: Build Your Vision (Optional). Bring your garden to life using clay, cardboard, LEGO blocks, or recycled materials. Create a three-dimensional model or detailed diorama that shows how children would move through and interact with your space.
Step 5: Share Your Innovation. Present your garden design, explaining how each element helps children connect with nature. What feature do you think would become children’s favourite gathering spot? How does your design solve the challenge of bringing nature into urban spaces?
AI-generated image.. As I have written before, I do not try several times to create an image. This image has the last step twice, and Step 1, etc, is shortened to Ste 1 . . . but overall it is almost perfect!
Materials for Your Design Adventure
Gather paper, markers, and colored pencils for sketching. Collect nature photographs or plant catalogues for inspiration. Use cardboard, glue, scissors, and recycled materials like bottle caps or egg cartons for model-making.
Research native plants that thrive in your local climate; these will be the most successful and environmentally friendly choices.
Through this design challenge, children are not just imagining a garden; they are practising the same creative problem-solving and nature-inspired thinking that will help solve tomorrow’s environmental challenges. Every sketch, plant, and design choice is a step toward becoming the kind of innovative thinker our changing world needs.
Link to blog posts about Biophilic Design. Biomimicry and Biophilic Design – Stepping into Kindergarten, A Kindergarten Inspired by Biophilic Design and Biomimicry – Outdoor Space, A Kindergarten Inspired by Biophilic Design and Biomimicry, and Biophilic Design in Learning Spaces.
AI was used to inspire ideas for this blog post.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is biomimicry?
Biomimicry is the practice of looking to nature for solutions, then applying what we learn to design and problem-solving. Instead of inventing from scratch, it means studying how plants, animals, and ecosystems have already solved a challenge — like staying cool, collecting water, or absorbing carbon — and adapting that strategy for human use.
How does biomimicry help address climate change?
Nature has been adapting to extreme conditions for billions of years, so many organisms already hold working solutions to problems we now face at a larger scale — cooling buildings without electricity (termite mounds), collecting water in drought (the Namib beetle), protecting coastlines from storms (mangrove roots), and capturing carbon (corals, forests, kelp). Biomimicry means studying those solutions and applying the same principles to human design.
How can children get involved in biomimicry?
Children don’t need special training to think like a biomimicrist — just curiosity and a habit of asking “how does nature solve this?” Simple ways to start include a backyard scavenger hunt for nature’s patterns, a “design-an-animal” challenge for a changing climate, or building a small model (like a passive-cooling structure or a water collector) inspired by something they’ve observed outdoors.
Is biomimicry only for scientists and engineers?
No — biomimicry is as much a mindset as a profession. Anyone can practice it by observing nature closely and asking design questions. Professional biomimicry practitioners apply it in architecture, materials science, and engineering, but the same core skill — careful observation followed by “what if we built it that way?” — is exactly what this post’s classroom and family activities are designed to build in children.
Åsa Jomård
In 2015, Åsa completed a course in Biomimicry: A Sustainable Design Methodology at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. With over 10 years of experience exploring nature for inspiration and as a former member of Ben, Biomimicry Education Network, she brings both academic background and creative teaching experience to her work. Her materials seamlessly integrate stories, nature observations, and design challenges, making them perfect for inquiry-led learning in early primary contexts.