Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/image-and-scale-child-care-facility-design/5012097/
What has happened to the art of building child care centers and preschools? Too often I am dismayed when I visit a child care center and find that it looks like an elementary school or, even worse, some sort of institutional building. Too big. Too impersonal. Concrete block or poured-in-place concrete. Brutal, inhumane even for adults. But for children? Are we creating developmentally appropriate environments, or are we creating warehouses for young children?There are many issues here, but one of the central issues - the heart of the matter, it seems to me - is the image and scale of the building. Are we creating little schools for little children, in their image and scale? Sadly, often not. Often we see buildings not at all in the scale of young children. Not just in the larger cities, but we can easily come upon massive buildings for 200 or even 300 little children under the age of 5 or 6 in medium sized cities and in many suburbs. It's not just the number of children in one building that is the problem (it is possible to design wonderful buildings for 200 or more children), it's the inhumane image and overwhelming scale ...