Adapting and designing spaces: Children and their schools

Kenkmann, Andrea (2011) Adapting and designing spaces: Children and their schools. CEPS Journal, 1 (2). ISSN 1855-9719

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Abstract

In schools, children experience their environment on three different levels: firstly, they constantly make spatial decisions by positioning themselves in relation to others and organising their immediate environment; secondly, they can potentially contribute to shaping the classroom spaces; and, thirdly, they are confronted with the designed school as a whole. It is argued here that our experiences of spaces are related to our memories, which provide us with a framework of references that allows us to ‘read’ and construct spaces. Whereas on the lowest level of spatial involvement children are natural decision makers, the higher levels require access to, and an understanding of, shared practices and discourses. Although existing data on children’s perceptions of their schools suggest that children’s participation in the school design process is laudable for all sorts of reasons, such participation means overcoming considerable barriers for comparatively little gain in terms of the design quality. It is the level of the classroom where a more genuine shared organisation and (re)creation of space can take place on an everyday basis.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	C E P S Journal is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. (From http://www.cepsj.si/doku.php?id=en:journal)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > School of Rehabilitation Sciences (former - to 2014)
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	09 Jul 2014 12:12
Last Modified:	15 Jul 2025 02:31
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/49404
DOI:	10.26529/cepsj.425

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