Playgrounds: The Educational Importance of Outdoor Spaces

Abstract

The outdoor space for playing (playground) has its own learning opportunities. Nowadays education is about a paradigm shift. This change involves rethinking spaces where teaching takes place and setting new educational challenges. Nevertheless, is this applied to playgrounds? Has it deeply changed the way children play? What challenges must face an outdoor space for children and youngster in the twenty-first century? At the same time architecture, focused on social issues since the economical crisis, considers the real scope design has on human life for the first time. Discussion in international fora arise questions as: Can design challenge inequality? Can we design community engagement? Can design reclaim public space? How do we design with scarcity? Linking architecture and education, the article will delve further into children’s learning in outdoor spaces. Nowadays children access to these spaces is becoming more and more restricted. That is the reason why it is important to tackle the problems current playgrounds must solve and the extent than design can have on them.