A richly detailed study of design for childhood provides both inspiration and warnings for those working in the field, finds Barbara Kaucky

Words
Barbara Kaucky

“Our built environment is making kids less healthy, less independent and less imaginative”, argues architecture critic Alexandra Lange in her new book, ‘The Design of Childhood’. “What those hungry brains require is freedom. Treating children as citizens rather than consumers can break that pattern, creating a shared spatial economy centred on public education, recreation and transportation safe and open for all”.

Lange shines a light on how children’s perceived or real material needs, be they toys, furniture or the family home itself, have become a space commercial interests compete to fill with more and more stuff. The book investigates how this has changed the experience of childhood and, so she argues, led us to a state where children are treated as consumers, unempowered and mollycoddled. Her ambition is to share with us resistance to all this fenced-in fun. She investigates, in great detail, progressive movements aimed at fostering children’s development and how architects and designers translate theory into design for play, learning and neighbourhood living. Lange explores this world of child-centred design through looking at, in turn, Blocks, the House, the School, the Playground and the City.

Play panels at West 67th Street Adventure Playground, Central Park, New York, designed by Richard Dattner Architect, 1967 (ph: Norman McGrath).

In ‘School’, Lange considers how forward-thinking architects in the US have played a key role in shaping alternative approaches to educating young people, fuelled by changing attitudes to the importance and purpose of childhood. She looks at some of the US school systems at the forefront of shifting education away from the filling of ‘empty vessels’ to empowering young people. Revolutions often have their catalysts in the most unexpected of places and this proved true in educational architecture, according to Lange. The small town of Columbus, Indiana, found itself at the forefront of the move to open-plan schools in the 1960s. As schools shifted from didactic instruction to project-based learning, architects in Columbus created ‘schools without walls’, reflecting the broader societal shift from traditional seats of authority to a counterculture that questioned shibboleths including those around the purpose of education and the spaces within which it should take place. Schools in Columbus and then beyond became the child equivalent of cities where exploration could take place within safe boundaries.

West 67th Street Adventure Playground, Central Park, New York, designed by Richard Dattner Architect, 1967 (ph: Norman McGrath).

Lange also explores the complex history of thoughts and actions relating to children and outdoor play and – especially timely – the shifting battle lines over the purpose of playgrounds and the degree of risk that children should be allowed to encounter in play spaces.

Lange looks back at some early high points of empowering young people to construct their own spaces, including the building of Squirrel Hall at King Alfred School in north London in 1920, where students as young as six helped to build an open-air theatre. It is perhaps no surprise that a key figure in the world of play design, Aldo van Eyck, attended the school before going on to design more than 700 minimalist playgrounds around Amsterdam that offered children stages for play “separate but not sequestered from the business of adult streets and sidewalks”. Lange also explores the effect of litigation on stifling playground design since the late 1970s, showing the impact of the innocuous-sounding ‘Handbook for Public Playground Safety’ on US playscapes after its publication in 1981.

Science lab and the ‘mountain’ at Vittra School Telefonplan, Stockholm, designed by Rosan Bosch Studio, 2011 (ph: Kim Wendt).

For architects working to create child- and family-friendly spaces, Lange’s deep research is a revelation. Her book is inspiring through its exploration of the wealth of original thinking on child-centred learning and empowerment, as well as warning of pitfalls into which designers have inadvertently stumbled. ‘The Design of Childhood’ places our contemporary efforts within the context of 200 years of progressive ideas by activists and educators, given form by architects and designers. Books focusing on the world of childhood are rare and this one, published at a moment of resurging interest, can help us to make childhood a better place.

‘The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids’
Alexandra Lange
Bloomsbury, 416pp, £18