Figure 5.48. Interactive school designs

Meeting children’s developmental needs requires thoughtful facility design that goes beyond baseline regulatory requirements and standard development practices. As a designer it is very important to creating a high- quality and sustainable facilities infrastructure.

It is important that the tool for planning, designing and building early childhood spaces that are safe, healthy, nurturing, developmentally appropriate and aesthetically pleasing for the children and adults who use them. The physical environments in which young children spend their days learning, playing and socially interacting contribute significantly to their developmental growth. Brain development research shows that the years of life spent in school are a time of rapid cognitive and physical development. Understanding the developmental behaviours of young children and the programmatic and operational needs of early childhood professionals are essential to designing, developing and financing sustainable facilities that will support quality child care programs.

There are various concepts of the child-space relation. A widely accepted concept is the "awareness of the place", which characterizes a larger scope and higher synthetic level because it includes other concepts describing human relationship towards the space. The most cited concepts of this type are:

i. Binding to a place in space ii. Identification and iii. Belonging to a place