Climate change, increasing urbanization and densification in urban areas require new ways and solution approaches to enhance the quality and comfort of living in urban structures. Children and adolescents are spending the greater part of their day in schools. In general, open spaces in schools are mostly neglected. They are often not appropriate planned or designed to meet the requirements of the daily school routine. Due to lacking capacities of green care for plant-, grass fields and shade-giving trees, they are often relinquished. Quality rich learning spaces and the comfort in school internal and outdoor spaces are the foundation of good education.

¿GRÜNEzukunftSCHULEN¿ deals with the rudiments of building greening, not only theoretically but prototypical of two newly built schools as well as one school which is recently in the planning and building phase and with the comparing to the experiences of the current project ¿GrünPlusSchule¿ (GRG7 Kandlgasse, old building). The project focuses especially on the energy and water consumption of the greening system as well as the impacts of plants and substrate on building, indoor climate and microclimate. Much interest is payed to the comparison of non-ventilated rooms in old and new buildings together with mechanical ventilated rooms (class rooms and public rooms) in new buildings. A question, which is to explore, is the potential hazard of a high level of humidity in new buildings without ventilating systems. Due to this, investigations of mould spores in dense and isolated new buildings are from importance. A further emphasis of the project is the study and analyzation on social aspects, the integration of the greening system and the green care as a part of a sustainable school culture plus the influence of greening in classrooms on students and teachers ¿ in terms of a sustainable school progress and a contribution to the class concept ¿education for sustainable development¿.

The goal of the project, next to the implementation and evaluation of greening in new school buildings, is to record and report about the perceptions of the F&E projects in form of a guideline for green architecture in school buildings, for planning and building phases, redevelopment, construction, care, long-term maintenance (taking account of the summer holidays) of greening elements in buildings and outside schools. Additional teaching materials and ¿lessons learnt¿ of the social process are as well available for other interested schools.