Designing the best cities for children involves recognising their right to play as well as learn, says groundbreaking kindergarten architect Takaharu Tezuka

Whether it’s the Radical Childcare Hub in Birmingham exploring parent-led co-operatives, or an experimental nursery located within a care home in Seattle, designers and innovators are coming to the same conclusion: in order to build the perfect city for children, you have to create the right environment for all ages.

As the groundbreaking kindergarten architect, professor Takaharu Tezuka, puts it: “It’s important to design a society that is interdependent. We can put the elderly right next to the kindergarten – actually that is how society used to be. These days, society tries to solve all its problems by dividing life into small puzzles, but if you put them together, you can see the bigger picture.”

This holistic approach to design for children was a key theme of Making Space 2016, an international award and conference hosted by Children in Scotland last month, where Tezuka delivered a keynote address on design for children. He has garnered global plaudits for his oval-shaped Fuji Kindergarten, near his native Tokyo, where there are no physical boundaries between classrooms and the outdoors, and the roof forms part of the playground.

Designed around a philosophy that values children’s right to play as well as learn, Tezuka is determined to change the way we design for the youngest people in society. “We need discussion and debate on an international platform about whether the needs and rights of children to play and learn, uninhibited, are sufficiently understood and taken into account during the architectural design process,” he explains.

“If you go to some kindergartens, their playgrounds are covered in plastic, everything’s flat, and there’s no challenge in their life. Maybe the children feel safe there when they’re small, but they’ve lost the chance to learn as they grow up.”

The Fuji Kindergarten is quite the antidote to these sanitised designs: built in the shape of an oval with a perimeter of 183 metres, it is conceived as a single village for around 500 children. The interior is an integrated space with classrooms and recreational areas softly partitioned with furniture. Three 25-metre high preserved zelkova trees project up through the interior and roof decking for children to explore during break times.

To achieve such a holistic approach, designers must engage with children as well as adults, says Diarmaid Lawlor, director of place at conference partner Architecture and Design Scotland.

“Designers often ask the wrong questions at the wrong time,” Lawlor says. “The question of space comes after the primary question of ‘what does learning look like for you?’ When you ask this question of carers and learners, you get a sense of their daily routine, and what spaces could accommodate that.” In making time to have these discussions, he adds, it’s also essential to keep in mind that people – not architects – are the experts in their own lives.

According to Lawlor, the best-designed city for children would comprise three inter-locking elements: intergenerational spaces, life-long learning (linking early years education with the world of work), and putting special educational needs at the heart of learning, to create whole communities of learners.

The first idea is perhaps best captured in the work of Seattle’s Intergenerational Learning Center, where a preschool for under-fives is located in an elder care facility, which has an average age of 92.

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Referensi : https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/dec/20/how-build-perfect-city-children-kindergarten-architect#img-2