Learning Landscapes 

Children learn everywhere and all the time but they need plenty of space to explore and independently learn the ways of the world, playing is learning. In dense urban environments the competition for space is becoming harder and harder and children seldom have a voice in the negotiation for space. Cities and the planning there of put very little focus on children and their required space, instead they are happy to confine them to schools, buildings that are often outdated with strict historical typologies and a school yard smaller than most parking lots.

 

Our master theses took children in focus and looked at how to include them in the design and development of the spaces they use the most – schools. 

 

We wanted to create a place or a way for children to not only express their needs and wishes but also help them break free of already learned conventions and rules for schools. During an extended process where we worked with kids in the ages 6-12, we tried out different participatory principles and methods like collages, tours and round table discussions. 

 

This process gave us almost an infinite amount of information and insight to what the children wanted from their school building, with ideas going any direction you could imagine. Even though we had originally set out to try and interpret the information into a design we fast realised there were no good tools for us to do so and we decided to focus on how to actually develop a school design together with children. In other words develop the tool we were missing.

 

As we tried to translate this information into something that could be used for design processes we soon realised that for the process of planning school buildings to be truly inclusive the tool needed to stay open for interpretation. It should be something that could have a different outcome depending on which school and the children that used it. The result was a game that can be played with different ages and at different stages of the process.

 

The game focuses on school buildings and consist of different elements. The goal is for the children to think about the different rooms in a school, what they would like from them but also how can you combine them or how do place them in relation to each other. They place their ideas and wishes into a very generic system that can be stapled, combined and otherwise put together. Shortly it works as follows:

- Each child pulls a card out of the deck, the card lists a room and its requirements. For the game the requirements have been translated into how many platforms it can consist of, how many objects, atmospheres and movements the child can integrate in their design.

- Each participant creates their own space with the gathered things.

- In the next step the group must talk about the different rooms and spaces. How can they be combined? can one room be used for multiple functions? how o you move through a school and what is required to connect these rooms? Do you

need stairs or maybe a slide to get from one to the other?

- What sort of outside space and nature would you like to have?

- Now, put the rooms/spaces together and create a Learning Landscape!

 

Seen here are a very few excerpts from the documentation we made about the process and the game, for more information please have a look at the homepage!