A place for birds and children: Our story from Istria
When our family moved from the city to a small village in Istria, we didn’t have a grand plan. We simply wanted our children to spend more time outdoors, and for us to return to our own “default settings.” In the very first days, we realised something simple and important: when you finally slow down, you see how much you’ve been looking at for years without actually noticing.
I am an architect who escaped the city and ended up among olive trees, vegetables, and forest. Parenting today is demanding, and perhaps the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves and our children is to slow down and be present. To smell, to listen, to stop, to notice. Adults forget that easily; children, thankfully, do not.
Life in the countryside offers all of that naturally, and this is why our project grew on its own, step by step. We simply looked with new eyes at what we already had: a large piece of land, a forest you can get lost in in the best possible way, and an old stone house waiting for a new purpose.
Children and nature: A simple equation we are missing
From the first day, our children learned from the space faster than they learned from us. In the forest, they found their own little paths, their hiding place, their tree and their mud. What took me five years of architectural studies took them five minutes of play.
Today, when children often experience nature mostly through screens or from the back seat of a car, it’s easy to forget that nature is a place, not a piece of content. If we want them to understand it, they need to spend time in it, to live in it, and most importantly, to play in it.
What we are building: Four parts of a small but meaningful project
When we brought together all our ideas, we realised they naturally grew into four interconnected parts:
Forest classroom
We are launching forest workshops for children based on a Finnish educational approach that uses building and architecture to encourage creativity, spatial reasoning, and hands-on learning. Children plan, measure, saw, use basic tools, and build things that have real purpose. The impact is strong: motor skills, spatial awareness, social abilities, confidence, empathy and many other indirect benefits.
Mediterranean garden
We are planting a garden full of Mediterranean herbs and organic vegetables – a place of sensory learning, enjoyment, and curiosity for children and adults. Smelling, touching, recognising plants and observing seasonal changes is just as important as learning how to care for them.
Eco house
We are restoring an old Istrian stone house to create a place of a different kind of luxury: reconnection with yourself and with nature.
Bird observatory
The bird observatory wasn’t the first step, but it became the most beautiful connection between everything we were already doing. While designing our workshop cycles, we knew we wanted to include the birds of Istria and give children the chance to design and build a birdhouse of their own.
That’s how the idea of a structure made of 126 birdhouses came to life. The number is defined by the architectural design itself: an elevated structure with a transparent, sheltered viewing cube, surrounded by rows of birdhouses attached along the exterior.
Children will build them during the workshops: simple, functional, and suited to the species that live here. Some will include transparent elements so children can safely observe what happens inside without disturbing the birds.
The warmest part is that each birdhouse carries the name of one supporter.
The Bird Observatory may be the most visible and eye-catching part of the project, but it is actually a bridge: between children’s play and lasting impact, between today and what we hope remains. It is a way for people to leave a real trace in a world where support is often reduced to a digital “like.”
Istria is changing quickly, like many landscapes. Birds are losing nesting spaces, and structures like these are not a decoration, but an actual need. Birdhouses work quietly and long-term, season after season, as a small contribution to nature and the bird observatory becomes the place where play turns into a lasting trace.
What comes after the birds
When we finish the bird cycle, we move on: an insect hotel, small forest shelters, nature art, branch structures, simple tools, and many nature-based experiments. We’ll be ready for sun, rain, wind and everything that belongs to childhood spent outdoors.
Why we are doing all this
Because a relationship with nature is learned first with the hands, and only then with the head.
Because children who build birdhouses today will understand why nature needs protecting tomorrow.
Because sitting in a forest is never a waste of time.
And then, not often but just enough, a hoopoe passes through our garden and it always makes me smile and reminds me that all this matters. The more space we leave to nature, the more it will remain here for all of us.
It may be a small project, but it carries a big intention: to teach children care through experience, and to give nature back the space that has always been hers.
With a different approach, we raise different children and different children create a different world ❤️
If you feel connected to our story and wish to support the bird observatory and the children’s workshops, our project is now live on Kickstarter.
