"For them, the world is not yet rationalized into function and circulation but is experienced through emotion and curiosity. Where adults may navigate rooms through habit, children inhabit them through immediacy. A patch of sunlight becomes an event. The curve of a hallway invites wandering. The sound of footsteps on wood or the softness of fabric beneath fingertips is not background but information."
"As Maurice Merleau-Ponty reminds us: "We do not merely see space; we are in it." Children inhabit this truth more fully than adults. They learn with their bodies before they reason with their minds. Spatial qualities of proportion, tactility, rhythm, and atmosphere will influence cognitive growth as much as any curriculum. Where adults rely on habit and abstraction, children map the world somatically, assembling meaning from the play of light, sound, and material."
Children experience space primarily through sensation, movement, and curiosity rather than abstract function, mapping environments somatically and learning with their bodies before reasoning. Spatial qualities such as proportion, tactility, rhythm, light, and atmosphere shape cognitive and emotional development and influence feelings of safety, autonomy, belonging, and possibility. Designing for early learning requires negotiating philosophy, psychology, and materiality to make environment itself pedagogical. Montessori principles translate to architectural choices: low shelves, scaled furniture, unobstructed circulation, durable sensorial surfaces, and intentionally choreographed movement to support independence without chaos. Design choices implicitly teach and must be chosen deliberately.
Read at ArchDaily
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