In summer 2022, the latest in a series of architecturally notable preschool new-builds was completed in Říčany near Prague. Situated at the edge of an existing low-rise development and a new housing area Větrník, it will most definitely stand out among the old and new family homes—the street front remains relatively modest with a simple white render finish, but in the back garden the massing unfolds in a series of bright colourful pyramidal shapes, or pagodas. Inside, the main entrance atrium is the heart of the building with a huge rope net hanging above, accessible from the gallery. In the classrooms, the irregular spaces underneath the pagodas’ slanting roofs become hideouts or teepees with scattered daylight coming in through small triangular windows.

If we are to understand and develop diversity in environmental design it is necessary to reevaluate the dialectical approach to it. Not in the sense of creating and emphasising polarities, but through listening to and observing the resonance of the life-giving tensions between them. In the same way vital stability needs occasional instability, viable domestication needs a certain amount of wilding. It makes it easier to accept otherness, which doesn’t have to mean a loss of existing values, but instead can be crucial for their restimulation and updating. It can help overcome the anthropocentric approach to the environment and decolonise its impacts in favour of new ecologies of interspecies coexistence.