Not a Child’s Play

Spaces for children often follow a set of stereotypes dictated not by what children want or like but rather an adult’s perception of a child’s needs based on their own biases and insecurities. In this studio, students learned to negotiate and strike a balance between a child’s and adult’s vision for a built space in the context of a Primary School. Learning is the central activity in schools. This studio dealt with developing a Spatial Pedagogy that facilitates learning while placing the spotlight on the physical and psychological needs of children. An added dimension has been to explore the idea of primary school design in two different site contexts –rural and urban. While the key question that was investigated through this studio was ‘what do children want with respect to the spaces they occupy?’, other aspects that were delved into such as ‘are children in urban centres different from those in rural centres?’ and ‘can the quality of spaces for children be independent of monetary limitations? ’.Aspects such as –how structured should be ‘structured’, how safe is ‘safe’, how adaptable should be ‘adaptable’ and so on in the context of children’s spaces were looked at and explored