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| Thursday, 06 January 2005 |
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Compiled by Edward Arambewala Architecture and early childhood development by Architect Dhushyanthi Peiris The architects have always claimed to be designing for people and thus to be interested in designing an environment that can uplift the spirit and enhance the sense of well-being of the users.
(1) Perception - Obtaining or receiving inputs. (2) Cognition - Function involved in the process of thinking, remembering and feeling. (3) Spatial behaviour - Output manifested through action and responses.
The term "development" refers to the process by which a child gains and changes through its life span. In humans the most dramatic development changes occur in infancy and childhood. Therefore the childish experiences are the hidden seeds that contain the essence of creating a fully matured person in the future. Hence the experience of childhood should not be hindered. Development has been stated as "a construct in search of an identity". Development is a process rather than a state, and therefore experiencing. An environment which is potentially rich in opportunities would activate such a process alone child will sharpen perceptual and cognition process. Active and purposeful perception is the process of obtaining information from and about our surrounding. It is guided by our motivations and needs. Various people have classified theories of perception in different ways. Bishop Berkley (1709) argued that we learn about visual spaces by association between "Clues" from different sensory and motor systems. Piaget shared the stating assumption that "Touch Tutors Vision" in early development. It is said that visual sensation alone cannot yield knowledge of reality except in relation to sensation of movement and touch. Cognition deals with acquisition, organisation and storage of knowledge. It focuses on issues of thinking, learning remembering, feeling and mental development. From the earliest moments of life the infant's discovery of the world and growing self-awareness begin within the context of the home surrounding. He first learns to discover his immediate surrounding which becomes his domain which is generally the crib or the playpen. He explores the environment with his hands and begins to sense the physical properties around him. Then with time children learn to distinguish oneself from others particularly in relation to the people at home he is directly involved with. He explored the surrounding with all his sensory organs. The symbolic play which becomes a part of growing is essential. It must be encouraged to develop the imaginative power. In the act of symbolic play, the internalized actions and objects are represented externally with the symbolic objects of the physical environment. Then children distinguish what is social in their environment and what are physical objects places and spaces. Once the children can distinguish themselves and others from physical surrounding the home indeed become their world and as such a property designed home could enhance this process of development. Out of an unidentified mass of sound, light, texture and movement evolves the recognition and identification of meaningful spaces, and places and the steady comprehension of how to use them. As this process continues children develop qualitative associations to objects, places and spaces - some positive, some negative some neutral and some combination of such relations. As the child become mobile its pattern of movement through the home will reveal intention and motives that clearly implies the emerging development. A toddler learning to walk is confronted by variety of surfaces and changing ground levels in which to practice and perfect its skills. There comes a point in life when the child is eager to explore the physical world around the home. "The Outside World" presents a far greater complexity. There are streets to be crossed, route to be learnt, signs to be familiar with, stores to be recognised, sounds, smells, lights and shadows to be experienced. The child's perception and conceptualizing ability of the surrounding environment gets built up slowly. It becomes more complete and sophisticated as time goes on. The neighbourhood surrounding is important in the child's social development. There are opportunities for the child to manipulate elements of the neighbourhood setting in ways that are not possible or permissible in the home. There has been research to show that outdoor play is an important way of social and cognitive development. The child's broadening experience with the physical surrounding directly relates to mastery and confidence which inturns tells us something about the success of its own development. Some of the contributing factors to the well-being of the child will be Parental care, Social issues, Economic factors, Effects from the built environment. As architects, the factors to be considered are what the built environment has to contribute, where as the other issues will not come under the control of an architect. Therefore when shaping the built environment one must give adequate consideration to the needs of a human being while giving special interest to the needs of children and how the Built environment could affect or satisfy these needs. The Built Environment that is created by architects should encourage the development of competence through scale. It will ensure that there is not too great a discrepancy between what the children want to do and what they cannot do. One thing that has to be kept in mind is the younger the child, the closer his eye level is to the ground and this is one of the reasons why the floor space, the texture and subdivisions of flooring, paving and levels of steps (small enough for a adult to step over, big enough to for a child to sit) are very much significant for the young. When considering the ability to find their way, the child depends on their ability of perception of the physical environment. The paths, edges, districts, nodes and Landmarks become important in way finding together with its physical form, the social information collected by the child including norms about what takes place in particular spots, behaviour in response to others in the spaces, how they are controlled and by whom, carry a heap of information in the child's world. There should be plenty of opportunities provided in the built environment. These opportunities could create an environment that encourage movement or an environment that move and stimulate senses. The ideal environment affords infants and toddlers to learn by moving and stimulate a full range of movements for body control and control of self in space, by sitting, swaying, crawling, running, climbing and bending. These will develop gross motor skills. As sensory organs are designed to detect changes in stimulation, rather than to monitor constant input, the senses function on the basis of an environmental movement. If the movement involves dramatic fluctuations in stimulation levels, it can be frightening and disorienting. Instead the senses will maintain optimal level of responsiveness, if confronted with rhythmic patterns of predictable sameness combined with moderate diversity what the researches had identified as "difference within sameness" such as swaying of trees, glowing hearths. The need for harm avoidance is developed among all higher species of animals. A comfortable surrounding fosters the feeling of security and trust that is critical to cognitive, emotional and motor development as interaction is an important factors, so is withdrawal. It is the mechanism for fulfilling a security need. On the other hand it becomes an important factor in the development process. The need of privacy, self identity and personalization all contributes to his or her major spatial needs which should be fulfilled. The need to emphasise the needs of children had become ever more important in today's context with the increasing number of commercial day-care centres, nurseries and play schools. The increasing financial concerns and business affect the design of environments for children. The cliental group have different needs, speak different languages and have different values. Whereas parents may be highly child-oriented and demand environments that are conducive to children's exploration and manipulation. If we create an environment that deprives the child's needs he loses the attachment to his surrounding and would turn out to be citizen that will retaliate in various ways, giving rise to a society with violence and hatred, which has become the main problem in the present context. The architect's role has become ever more important as Korobkin (1976) suggested that architects design in three basic steps, First they develop an image of a project. This image is not simply visual; it is a whole network of ideas. Secondly they represent that image by drawing it or describing it. Thirdly they test it against financial, functional and Technical feasibility. Therefore the architect has a greater responsibility to consider the little citizen with utmost importance when shaping the Built Environment, especially when the main user is the child. D.S. Peiris SLIA designs housing for the tsunami affected Two fold help The Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (SLIA) is taking part in two programmes to help in re-settling the tsunami affected in housing.
And in the second programme SLIA on its own and with the help of the willing public and Architects institutions abroad will construct five model villages of one hundred houses in each for the affected in South, West and the East in the country. SLIA President Architect Lalith de Silva and the president elect for the year 2005 Architect Rukshan Widyalankara gave out the following details at a meeting with Architects held at the SLIA yesterday. The Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (SLIA) has been asked by the Government to design houses for the thousands of families who have been dehoused in the tidal wave (tsunami) tragedy, that struck the coastal belt of South West, and the East of Sri Lanka on December 26. Following this request made by the Urban Development Authority under the Housing Ministry to the SLIA, the SLIA has appointed committees to design the houses for Hambantota, Matara, Galle, Colombo and the East according to the specific needs. The Architects assigned to these committees comprise - Rehan Thillekeratne, Harsha Weerakkody, Dr. Dayananda Waduge, Harsha Munasinghe, Ashani de Silva and M. M. G. Samuel. Designs to the submitted to UDA on Friday SLIA President Architect Lalith de Silva told the meeting that the designs have to be submitted to the SLIA by Wednesday January 5, as they are to be submitted with estimates at a meeting with the UDA scheduled for Friday January 7. Detailing out the project he said the designs are to be for three categories of houses - (1) The squatters who had their huts along the beach, (2) For those who had houses in their own plots of land, (3) Those who had their own houses in vulnerable areas. 10,000 Housing Units in flats He said initially the Government wants to house 10,000 affected squatter families who are now in refugee camps in several blocks of flats, each family unit being given a flat of 250 square feet, the approximate cost should not exceed Rs. 200,000. The Government wants this project to commence very early, before the end of this month. He said these flats are going to be in three storeyed blocks the ground floor being left open and not for living, as in the present tragedy it had been found that in upstair houses, the ground floor only had been damaged, and not the upper floors. Design options for second category With regard to the second category of houses, several core-design options are to be provided, as SLIA had done in the case of housing for the flood affected in Ratnapura year before last. Here several core-designs with completed designs are to be provided giving the people some choice in selecting a design. The idea being first the core-house can be built and occupied and later on keep on adding the rest to the core completing the house. With regard to the third category where the house had been on a vulnerable land, and depending on the new site to be provided by the State, the same housing option is to be given to them as to those in the second category. In all these designs the ground floor is to be left open. SLIA to build five model villages of 100 houses each SLIA President Architect Lalith de Silva said that the Institute was planning to build five model villages for the affected people in the five areas of South, West and the East of 100 houses in each, with funds raised from the Architects, the public and foreign sources. He appointed a committee to work on this and shortly this committee would be issuing a public statement on this. As he was speaking on this subject he receved a call from the president of the Association of Architects in Pakistan offering assistance to any project the SLIA was planning to do for the people affected in the tsunami tragedy in Sri Lanka. Dr. Carl Pruscha Professor of Architecture Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna writes: As a part time-resident of your beautiful island and thus reading your newspaper I am particularly fond of your feature page 'Arch Watch'. Your article on the architecture of identity by Ameen Husseina contains so much of my own thought to the subject, that I felt writing to you with the following suggestions. A few years ago I had the opportunity to design and build several bungalows within the precinct of the one world foundation - a free education unit at Wathuregama - some 77 km south of Colombo off Galle Road. With this design I have been attempting to propose a photo type of a contemporary Sri Lanka house containing most of the features designed by Husseina in this article. I would thus be very pleased to invite you and possibly Husseina too for a visit and avail myself - if designed - for an interview on this matter there itself . |
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Produced by Lake House |
One of the reasons for creating buildings has always been to provide
shelter from the extremes of climatic conditions. At a most complex level
the built environment should meet the basic human needs which are
Psychological needs, Safety and Security needs, Affiliation needs and
Cognition needs. As physiological process play a fundamental role in
enabling man to adjust to or achieve mastery over his environment. It is
achieved through three processors.
Generally it is considered that the first seven years of the human
becomes the most important period regarding physical and mental
development. Therefore environments fashioned for the early childhood
development must be considered as one of the most important tasks of
architects.
In the first programme it is designing housing for the UDA in the
government's re-settlement scheme for the affected.
