Childhood and Architecture

The study of childhood and architecture deals with the interface between the social construction of childhood and the design of spaces for children. Research in this field focuses on the various arenas in which children’s everyday lives take place, and the way design expresses common ideas and conventions of proper childhood and constructs forms of action and interaction between the children and their human and physical surroundings. This field of inquiry emerged in relation to two permutations in recent decades within social sciences: (1) the emergence of the new childhood studies which view childhood as a social phenomenon and (2) the spatial turn in social sciences focusing on the spatial and physical aspects of social life. Modern childhood is characterized by spatial and temporal separation ...