Designing a Landscape Based on Childhood Play
Date
2011-11-30Type of Degree
thesisDepartment
Landscape Architecture
Metadata
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Children have the right to play. Throughout history we have recordings of children playing in all cultures. PLAY is a basic need along with nutrition, health, shelter and education. It is vital to the development of all children. It combines thought and action. It gives satisfaction and a feeling of achievement to both children and adults. PLAY is the first form of communication and is vital to the development of children. Strangely, however, it is largely unaccounted for in landscape architecture. To become completely immersed within an outdoor space, a child needs to experience diverse opportunities for manipulation, exploration prospects, spatial immersion, and landscape exploration. For these reasons and others, children’s geographies have become a critical area of urban social research. PLAY is the first form of communication and is vital to the development of children. Strangely, however, it is unaccounted for in public housing project design. This design research project asks how a PLAY-based landscape can provide specific developmental conditions for children in low-income social housing projects; specifically Moton Housing Projects in Auburn, Alabama.