The Greenprint Overview is about exploring the role and impact that student outdoor spaces have on their health and wellbeing and help make visual these needs.
The Schoolyard Greenprint Research Reports
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The Schoolyard Greenprint Research Reports
About the reports
This suite of Schoolyard Greenprint documents provides a roadmap for embracing the full potential of outdoor spaces to meet the diverse needs of the school communities. It is designed to support principals, students, designers and community members in advocating for school grounds that better respond to students’ outdoor needs.
Each document offers clear, practical guidance to build a shared design language, deepen understanding of school sites, and empower users with processes and precedents to support both. Used together, the documents provide schools with ideas, tools and strategies for creating outdoor environments that best meet the diverse needs of their students.
Research team
- Dr Gweneth Leigh – Chief Investigator and Research Fellow, HRI
- Professor Rachel Davey – Director, HRI
- Director Linda Corkery – Landscape Foundation Australia
- Dr Claire Manning - Senior Project Coordinator
- Hannah Richardson - Senior Project Coordinator
- Finaly Robinson - Youth Co-researcher
Date
These reports were published in July 2026.
Introduction videos
Youth Voices
Project impact
Peter Garret
Reports
Overview
Typologies
The Greenprint Typologies provides a planning and design resource to guide how school environments can transition toward more nature-integrated, socially supportive green campuses. School campuses are categorised into different landscape layouts to explain how spatial design influences student activity, social interaction and connection to nature.
Design Guide
The Greenprint Design Guide provides a comprehensive, evidence-based framework for designing school outdoor spaces that better support student development and learning. Guidance is organised around six aspects of wellbeing – physical, emotional, psychological, cognitive, social and cultural – and sets out specific design guidelines and practical solutions for each.
Engagement Toolkit
The Greenprint Engagement Toolkit is about helping principals, students and designers to document new metrics that account for user experiences, perceptions and preferences to help identify which outdoor spaces are performing well while providing tools to address how to improve it when it’s not.
Download reports
Emerging findings
The Schoolyard Greenprint – Emerging Findings
report was an interim output from a national University of ÃØÃÜÖ±²¥ research project, based on a co-design approach that included online workshops and engagement with students, educators, designers, and policymakers across Australia, supported by working, reference, and youth groups.
Research team
- Dr Gweneth Leigh – Chief Investigator and Research Fellow, HRI
- Professor Rachel Davey – Director, HRI
- Director Linda Corkery – Landscape Foundation Australia
- Dr Claire Manning - Senior Project Coordinator
- Hannah Richardson - Senior Project Coordinator
- Finaly Robinson - Youth Co-researcher
Date
This report was published in April 2025.
Contact us
University of ÃØÃÜÖ±²¥ Health Research Institute
11 Kirinari Street
Bruce ACT 2617
+61 (02) 6206 8312
uchri@canberra.edu.au
