“Play is the highest form of research”.
Albert Einstein
Play is the pathway to children’s development and learning. Play and children’s entertainment venues offer invaluable opportunities for fulfilling children’s rights to development and learning, and for ensuring them have a happy and enjoyable childhood.
The Spatial Movement of the Parkour
The parkour’s three-dimensional movements offer children spatial experiences, while also defining open and closed spaces in outdoor areas with defined areas and points where it is elevated. For example, the administrative units opening onto the entrance area are located in the spaces created below as a result of the parkour rising to a level of +4.00. The building’s rhythmic structural system defines the space and boundaries on the exterior.
Intersections, Alternatives
Along the Parkour route, spaces intersect, and alternative routes allow children to take breaks from their games and activities when they get bored. Children can also go outside along this route; these are also places where children can meet their families. The cafeteria and multipurpose hall can be combined at stage level, allowing spaces to be used separately or together as alternatives.
All Age Groups Together
Although possible activities on the parkour were envisaged with physical characteristics of different age groups in mind, the spaces were not customized for specific age groups so that all age groups could be together. In line with the “zone of proximal development” theory, the aim was to make it possible for children of all age groups to cross paths and contribute to their learning processes. The course progresses in a spatial layout that allows parents to accompany their children when necessary, and the participation of people with disabilities to facilitate through circulation cores.
The Adventure Parkour
The adventure parkour begins its movement at the ground level, wrapping around the entrance and exhibition area while simultaneously allowing for a controlled transition. Children reach the +4.00 level via an inclined surface that features climbing tracks and slides, alongside the workshops. The experience, which starts with physical activities, continues at the +4.00 level with a series of learning and experience spaces. The cycle of experience, sharing, and physical activity across the domains of cognitive experience, psychomotor development, and social development is completed with a slide at the end of the parkour, leading into a ball pit. If desired, the activity cycle starts again.
Achieving the highest possible level of “optimal development” is only possible through play-based experiences that guarantee their happiness, featuring liberating, fun, and exploratory learning processes that support, rather than restrict, children’s development.
More Experience Areas on the Periphery
The building is placed on the north of the plot, creating a public space between it and the school parcel to the south. In this public area between the Bornova Children’s World and the school, more experience activity areas and an active performance space was provided for children even outside the centre’s operating hours. The main entrance taken from this public space, ensured integration with the rich outdoor uses. An interface holding the southern boundary was created through a building that extends along this space and organizes the physical activity areas. The park green areas on the western periphery were handled continuously on the ground by elevating the building on this border. The transparent surfaces proposed on the floor of the adventure path intended to enrich children’s experiences, and continuities are ensured by increasing intermittent permeability between indoor and outdoor spaces.
