School design patterns supporting learning through play

ABSTRACT

Education is essential for a country’s social and economic development and school architecture should be part of systems to support vital learning experiences of children and youth. This study investigates design patterns to support learning through play activities in schools. Play learning activities are explored as they act on the cognitive and motor development of children and young people. The potential of school buildings to embrace essential play learning activities is presented through their graphic translation into a list of design patterns. A new pattern language is created that includes value-based architectural settings for play, to support a productive school building design process.

KEYWORDS:

• Design patterns
• school building design
• play activities
• play design patterns
• learning modalities
• graphic representation

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by FAPESP – Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Process: 2016/11479-3 & 2016/21514-0).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Larissa Negris de Souza is a student at the University of Campinas, School of Civil Engineering, Arquitecture and Urban Design (FEC / UNICAMP) currently doing her PhD in the Architecture, Technology and the City (ATC) program. Her adviser is Prof. Dr. Daniel de Carvalho Moreira. She defended her masters degree in 2018 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Doris C.C.K. Kowaltowski in the same graduate program with a scholarship from FAPESP, the São Paulo State funding agency. She was a Visiting Researcher at Newcastle University with an exchange program scholarship by FAPESP between February and May 2017 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Pamela Palmer. Her professional degree, as an Architect and Urbanist, is from the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV) which she obtained in 2016. During her undergradute studies she obtained a federal CNPq Young Researcher Grant from 2012 to 2014, with a sustainable construction project. She was a member of the Junior Professional Office of her course as its Financial-administrative president for three years.

Doris C. C. K. Kowaltowski became a Full Professor in 2009 at the University of Campinas, UNICAMP. She obtained her PhD in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, UCB (USA) in 1980 and a Masters of Architecture also from UCB in 1970. In 1969 she graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture (with honors) from the University of Melbourne (Australia). The degree was revalidated in Brazil in 1985. Recently, as a retired professor she became a Collaborator in the Department of Architecture and Building, of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urban Design (FEC) at UNICAMP. She was the Coordinator of the Undergraduate Program in Architecture and Urban Design several times between 1999 and 2006 and the Associate Director of FEC/UNICAMP between 2003 and 2006. She has coordinated various research projects, supported by FAPESP, CNPq, FINEP and FAEP/UNICAMP. She is a member of FAPESP’s group of coordinators of projects in the area of Architecture and Urban Design. She teaches in both Civil Engineering and Architecture and Urban Design undergraduate courses of FEC. She is also involved in the graduate program of FEC in the program called Arquitetura, Tecnologia e Cidade (ATC). Her teaching focuses on architectural design and the design process. Specific interests include social housing projects and school building design. Research is in the areas of design methodology and tools to support the process with special interest in humanization of architecture and bioclimatic architecture. She has been the adviser of 9 Ph.D. theses and 8 Masters Dissertations. Thirty (30) undergraduate students have developed their first research projects with her. At the moment she is the adviser of 2 postdocs and 2 Masters students. On the national level she is the leader of the research group called Metodologia de Projeto em Arquitetura (Architectural design methods Group) of CNPq and was up to November 2011 the leader of the ANTAC group called Qualidade de Projeto e Avaliação Pós-Ocupação – APO (Design Quality and Post-Occupation Evaluation – for the period of 2018–2022).

Pamela Woolner’s initial degree was in psychology, with the first year as a mathematics/psychology joint honours student. After an MA (Philosophical Issues in Psychology), she completed a PGCE in secondary mathematics and taught in various north-east schools. Her PhD (2004) brought together her background in psychology with her experiences of teaching and learning mathematics. More recently, her interest in investigating the learning environment provided by schools has involved the more active participation of users (including students, teachers, non-teaching staff and the wider community). Participatory research approaches, are developed with colleagues in the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLaT). These use a range of visual and spatial activities to both engage and empower participants in sharing their experiences and knowledge. Currently she is the Degree Programme Director for the EdD and teaches on a range of ECLS and HaSS modules, mostly centred on research methods. In this role, she draws on my on-going research experience as a member of CfLaT.

Daniel de Carvalho Moreira is an Architect and Urbanist who obtained his professional degree from the Catholic University of Campinas (PUCCAMP) in 1994. In 2000 he obtained his Master’s Degree in Multimedia from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and his PhD in Civil Engineering from the same University. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the of Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urban Design (FEC) at UNICAMP. He teaches in both the Undergraduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism and the Graduate Program in Architecture, Technology and City (ATC). He was the Associate Coordinator of the Undergraduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism, Deputy Chief of the Department of Architecture and Construction and Coordinator of the Graduate Program ATC. He has experience in the area of Architecture and Urbanism, with emphasis on Design methods, working mainly in the following subjects: Architectural Programming and the Architectural Design Process.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo) [grant number FAPESP 2016/11479-3].