The Role of Play Space Designs in Nurturing Children`S Creativity

Today`s society needs to train creative children to do political, economic and social activities. Because children make up the most sensitive and influential age group of society, which plays a significant role in the revitalization of each generation, it is not possible to promote the human society, regardless of developing children and their minds. They need sensory stimuli for their mental development, and it can be possible by relating to the outside world. One of the cases of mental growth, is creativity which its source of creativity should be found in the experiences of childhood. From the researchers’ point of view, the best time for this progress is the particular age of childhood, the most important of which is the pre-school age; because the child goes through this period of his life in an incredibly creative way while He deals with the revelation what is new to him. Therefore, these years of creativity cannot be ignored, and since children in this age group devote more time to play, particular play environments must be designed to foster their creativity. So, one of the factors of nurturing the creativity is to provide suitable environment for play. In this respect, children`s relationship with play environment and the conditions during play can help them to promote their creativity.
In this field, researchers have paid attention to play and its effects on children, but a few studies have turned to play environment and its effect on creativity formation. Therefore, this research aims to attain the principles of designing play spaces for pre-school children focusing the environmental affordance on children`s mind and behaviors to promote the creativity. Cognition of the child is an effective help in providing solutions for this. Therefore, it is necessary to define the child from the viewpoint of researchers. The child is the product of the interaction of nature-education, inheritance-environment and nature-experience. In other words, the child is a system of “nature and environment” or “education and experience”. With such a vision, it becomes clear that nature and the environment can have an inevitable impact on children and provide the grounds for intellectual growth and creativity in them. Creation of the landscape in the natural environment and the presence of plants in the spaces affect the creativity and creativity process. After recognizing the child, the concept of creativity is discussed. Important components of creativity include curiosity, imagination and play. Also, the dynamic interaction of the child, the search and discovery of environmental capabilities, will require his active participation in the shaping and exploitation of the environment. Today psychologists have realized the impact of architectural space on the behavior of children, and the environment can empower children under the age of six to recognize social relationships. In addition, children are more likely to be affected by the environment over the years and are naturally curious about their surroundings.
This study is an attempt to apply the principles of design that can provide a platform for better intellectual growth and creativity in the playgrounds of pre-school children by enhancing motivation, imagination and curiosity. Therefore, considering the broadness of the subject, a definition of creativity is first presented, then the factors discussed above will be discussed along with related theories.
Initially a comprehensive definition of creativity and its application in architectural designs in terms of creativity is expressed. Having introduced the children`s growth in the preschool period, we review the nature and children`s creativity relationship. In addition to nature which plays the most important role in growth of creativity in playgrounds, we pay attention to other factors influencing the playgrounds and basic criteria to design suitably for prosperity of children`s creativity. These factors include: Accessibility and Freedom of Action, the attractiveness and the sudden variation of space, comfort and safety, simplicity and readability, complexity and space-discovery, visual details, flexibility (the space for different plays and walls and movable furniture), The shape and extent of the spaces (for more communication between children), the use of children’s works in the design of the interior, The presence of high and bright spray paints (creating a happy and stimulating space) And natural light. Therefore, it seems that children’s play environment should have the ability to turn into stimuli to create imaginative and curious motivations, and as these stimulatory effects are controlled, it influences on children’s creativity. Regarding different researchers in this field, there are suggested some strategies to design playground for children`s creativity. To clarify the issue, we have chosen five case studies of children`s centers in Tehran randomly and the results are analyzed.
The method was library-based and content analysis regarding theoretical foundation of environmental psychology, psychology and architectural design