Takaharu Tezuka is the architect behind Fuji Kindergarten, deemed by some as the best Kindergarten in the world. Tezuka followed around his own young children to inform his school design. He designed a school which encourages pupils to move, play, dream, imagine, and grow.

Thu-Hoang Ha, author from Ideas.Ted.Com describe the schools’ most notable features:

1. Circular playground lets the kids run forever

“We designed the school as a circle, with a kind of endless circulation. When we started, I had no preconceived notions. Studying other kindergartens was like looking in the rearview mirror of a car: Even if you look very closely, you can’t see anything in front.”

2. Pupils can slide to class

3. Pupils can climb to class

4. Intentional Distractions

“The kids love to look through the skylights from the roof. ‘Where’s my friend?’ ‘What’s going on underneath in class?’ And when you look down, you always see kids looking up from below. Here, distraction is supposed to happen. There are no walls between classrooms, so noise floats freely from one class to the other, and from outside to inside. We consider noise very important. When you put children in a quiet box, some of them get really nervous.”

Read more here: http://ideas.ted.com/inside-the-worlds-best-kindergarten/

Watch a video on the Fuji School here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd7mR3lb3yg