The New Age School

Abstract

The planning and designing of spaces for young children is generally based on adult's perception that is usually not relevant to the children's psychological functioning. The psychological framework of children's experience of place and architecture is based upon freedom of active movement in a dynamic environment for development of perception and other cognitive faculties. For children, spatial perception is an active experience unlike in adults who are passive in interaction with their environment especially their faculty of learning from the environment is mostly dormant due to saturation of experience. Mobility and diversity of sensorial feedback is paramount for a children centric environment. We can observe that static and functional spaces repulse children; they understand that a static space is not something they can play with or turn into a playground for their childish fantasies. Movable elements of appropriate scale that provide privacy are easier for them to arrange according to their requirements. This flexibility in the environment becomes a reflection of the child's own mindscape e. For adolescent children, the need for sensory feedback converts into outdoor expeditions for exploration of the neighborhood. The range of these forays being restricted only by the restrictions placed by guardians. For adolescents, the affinity to the outdoors is a reaction to the heavily built spaces of modern urban settlements. That which is built must connect to the landscape through the architectonic elements to remove this boundary. A child will recognize this blurring because he is ever in a mood to play and interact. A built environment that affords a child to be cognitively alert to the external stimuli through movement and social actions will encourage him or her to affiliate or create bonding with it and the union will result in the creation of emotionally charged memories and the healthy growth of personality in whatever direction it may tend to naturally lean in. This encouragement for individuality is critical today when all our social and economic structures are forcing conformity upon people. This growth need not be constrained but only supervised and guided in a relaxed manner without suffocation from stringent rules, rigid routines, constant surveillance and predetermined conclusions as much of modern children living in urban environments are forced under.