Studio KRAFT Stacks Timber Treehouses Along the Edges of a Crowded Budapest Schoolyard

Inner-city schools rarely get more land; they get the same tight courtyard and more children. At the Bajza Street Primary School in Budapest's 6th district, Studio KRAFT faced exactly that problem. More than 500 pupils share a courtyard boxed in by school buildings and a swimming hall, a space that until recently worked as one thing only: a rubber-surfaced sports field. The Vertical Playgarden, completed in 2025 and covering 215 m², answers the shortage the only way a dense block allows. It builds upward.

What interests us is the discipline of the move. Led by Ádám Pásztor and Dániel Déri, the team pushed every new structure to the perimeter and left the center of the court untouched for physical education. The timber and steel frames along the edges carry platforms, climbing routes, sheltered corners, planted nooks and outdoor classrooms. A single-purpose yard becomes a layered one, and nobody has to give up the ball game to get a place to read.

Holding the Edge, Freeing the Center

From above, the strategy reads at once. The red court stays an open field of play, while green volumes on timber stilts line up along the courtyard wall like a row of small houses. Many schoolyard upgrades fill the middle with equipment and lose the running space children actually use most. Here the designers treat the open court as a resource to protect, not a blank to fill.

Raising the structures on legs matters too. The ground beneath them stays partly usable, and the volumes sit at a height where they become a second level of the yard rather than obstacles at the first. Against the pale green facades and orange window surrounds of the school, the new pieces look at home without imitating anything.

A Courtyard That Was Only a Sports Field

The before condition is still legible: a rubber court, a small goal, a mesh fence, a wall of facade. It is a space that serves the sporty kids well and almost everyone else poorly. Children who want to sit, talk or hide had nowhere to go except the margins, and the margins were empty.

The new pavilion with its round windows and netting gives those margins substance. Seen behind a game in progress, it does not compete with the court; it frames it, giving spectators and the less athletic a place to be that is still part of the action.

Pavilions with Portholes

Inside, the language is simple and consistent: timber framing, green panel walls, round porthole openings, corrugated roofing and diagonal braces left visible. The portholes do a lot of work. They let children see out and teachers see in, which keeps enclosure from turning into concealment, a real concern in any school setting.

Mesh openings framed in timber extend the same logic at a larger scale. A plank floor runs past a wide view of the courtyard facades, so the upper level feels like a gallery overlooking the yard rather than a sealed box. Children use the frame as a stretching bar, a lookout and a running track in the same afternoon.

Climbing, Sliding, Spinning

The active program is dense but not chaotic. A green climbing wall, rope nets and soft rubber hills share one timber frame; a plank deck under a mesh roof becomes a space for spinning games; a house-shaped opening studded with wooden knobs leads into a red rope tunnel. Each element invites a different kind of movement, which is how you keep 500 children from queueing for the same slide.

We like that the house motif recurs as an opening rather than a decorative silhouette. It is a figure children recognize and want to pass through, and it gives the vertical structure a scale they can read as theirs.

Green Nooks and Planted Retreats

Landscape architects Open Air Design worked planting into the structures with climbing plants and green-covered play nooks. A spiral tube slide sits beside an existing tree trunk, and a gabled panel wall gathers children in the dappled shade of a leafy canopy. In a courtyard that was once all rubber surface, that shade and foliage are as much a part of the program as any platform.

The planted retreats also slow the pace of the yard. Where the court is about speed, these corners are about lingering, and the design gives them equal weight.

An Outdoor Classroom on Stilts

The quieter rooms may be the project's strongest contribution. A long timber bench inside a pavilion turns into seating for a group; a plank floor and a round chalkboard turn into a lesson space where a teacher can hold a class outside without hauling furniture into the yard. The architecture offers enough enclosure for focus and enough openness to stay connected to fresh air and light.

For a school with no spare indoor rooms, gaining informal teaching space this way is a practical win, not a gimmick. Reading, conversation and rest now have a dedicated address.

Plans and Drawings

The aerial site photograph makes the constraint plain: a small courtyard buried in one of Budapest's densest blocks. The axonometric shows the response, with stacked playhouse volumes running along one wall and the pink court kept clear beside a tall school facade. The elevation reveals four timber-legged towers growing in scale from left to right, a sequence that lets younger and older children find their own height.

The children's drawings are the most telling sheet. Towers, slides, treehouses and swings appear in pencil and crayon, and many of them made it into the final design. The participatory process with students and teachers was not decoration; you can trace its ideas directly into the built form.

Why This Project Matters

Dense cities keep asking schools to do more with courtyards that cannot grow. The Vertical Playgarden shows that the answer does not have to be a trade-off between sport and everything else. By working at the edges and building up, Studio KRAFT added climbing, hiding, reading and teaching space while protecting the open court that physical education depends on.

It also models a modest, transferable approach. Timber frames, panels, nets and planting are not exotic, and the strategy of perimeter density plus a free center could apply to hundreds of enclosed schoolyards across Central Europe. Paired with a design process that actually listened to children, it is a reminder that small budgets and small sites can still produce generous places.

The Vertical Playgarden by Studio KRAFT (lead architects Ádám Pásztor and Dániel Déri), Budapest, Hungary. Area: 215 m². Completed: 2025. Landscape architecture: Open Air Design. Structural engineering: Tetraplan Mérnökiroda Kft. Photography: Yanep Lust Collective.

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