Hayarden School, Israel

Meitar project – Yarden Center for Emotional Support – is a unique project at HaYarden School, attended by foreign and stateless children. The center came to life out of a need to provide emotional support to children in the school. This population identifies with emotional distress that manifests itself in behavioral problems and social and personal difficulties but does not have the knowledge and resources to care for children outside of school.

The process of developing the design concept was preceded by conversations with school staff, pedagogues and experts in the therapeutic field. The design challenge was to create a safe and positive environment, pleasant and relaxed, that encourages creativity and play, and allows for flexible and dynamic personal growth and development. Each girl and boy are different, and need different environment for the creative process. To this end, they created an environment that will allow every child to find the safest, most comfortable and most suitable place within it, and will also allow individual and team work depending on the type of therapy.

Steinberg // Fisher created soft corners, tables in a variety of heights and a variety of seating options in each of the spaces. It was important for them to use natural materials, to allow flow in the space by using soft and simple lines and a limited color palette to create ‘neutral’ spaces that would give a stage to the children’s products and put them at the heart of things.