Human factors is such a prominent theory in architectural design for primary schooling in terms of how physical environments can affect childhood learning. The main objective of this project was to create a learning environment for children of all backgrounds including, but not limited to children with disabilities, various sizes and height, race, age, and so forth, in order to create a universal design to stimulate childhood development.
The built environment includes the classroom design (ex: height of furniture that children of all sizes can use, width of areas for children to walk around in, playful areas that children can stimulate social values, and so forth.) that can not only stimulate learning, but also societal skills and values. It has been a problem in past history that the curriculum of primary school had little to do with the creation of the physical environment where there were ‘prison styled’ elementary schools with minimal classrooms for one grade, long enclosed corridors, and outdated colors that were from a previous decade. There was a notion that there was one teacher per classroom who taught all subjects in one classroom.
Today, there is an exploration of changing primary school curriculums to connect them into the sciences and natural histories, and to bring back the notion of earth preservation and stimulate learning by hands on training. All children learn differently and educational facilities are now responding to that notion. Teachers are now approaching the notion of learning through all types of learning including the “doing”, “seeing”, and “hearing”, for all age groups in order to increase learning for all children.
With all being said, I researched childhood development and behavior in order to understand how all kinds of children respond to built environments. The goal was to stimulate learning and social skills to help the younger generation be more successful in shaping our future. The design is a primary school called Integrating Elemental Learning for students K1-6 grade from the age range of 4-14 years in Fredensborg, Denmark. The curriculum of the school is based from nature where there are major leaning centers within the school focusing on the sciences, arts, music, and physical health. The original building named the Vilhelmsro Primary School came from a design competition by BIG Architects (Bjarke Ingles Group which will be built. The objective is to take this existing project and relate it back to childhood development. We changed the appearance and the functionality of the building.