Kindergarten Outdoor Space Design Research

The kindergarten is not only an important place for teachers teaching practice, but also a wonderland for children. To build a good kindergarten is not simple:while we pay intensive attention to kindergarten’s architectural design, interior design and configuration of teaching resources, we should also attach attention to the outdoor spatial design.The author of this thesis argues that the kindergarten outdoor spatial design needs high requirements from landscape designers, who need to study children’s activities, for different children activities usually request relatively different zones; in addition, designers need to take the different age groups, design scales, color collocation, the supervision on children during outdoor activities into consideration. Therefore, both safety and applicability should be fulfilled in a good kindergarten outdoor spatial design. Just as many excellent preschool education theories point out, good outdoor environment will subtly foster children’s imagination and their cognition development.The kindergarten outdoor spatial design research overseas has achieve considerably practical outcomes, and domestic researchers gradually pay great attention on it, with the research subjects involving interdisciplinary approaches. This thesis adopts kindergarten outdoor spatial design as the research subject, on the basis of summarizing the theories on child psychology, preschool childhood education, children’s (3-6 years old) physical and psychological characteristics, and theories of outdoor spatial design. Then this thesis conducts field studies of 16 kindergartens within Chengdu region, and extracts 9 of them as the cases for comparative analysis. During the process of field studies, the author took plenty of photos and notes, in addition to detailed observation on research object, which finally form the results data. The author also visited and interviewed some parents and kindergarten teachers in order to understand children’s preferences, children’s demands and demands of parents and teachers.Through field studies and interviews, the author of this thesis collects very important source materials, providing the foundation for the kindergarten outdoor spatial design. By collaborating how outdoor environment affects infants and young children’s (aged 3-6 years) physical and psychological characteristics with the theories of outdoor spatial design and other related realm, the author proposes an approach for kindergarten outdoor spatial design. Finally the author demonstrates the rationality and feasibility of said outdoor spatial design approach through the intensive studies on a very case,-Tian Li Guangyuan Kindergarten-, by which the author expects to provide reference to similar projects.Through the research of this thesis, following conclusions are drawn:(1) Through summarizing domestic and foreign well-known preschool childhood education theories, including foreign classical theories and Chinese official preschool childhood education theories, the author is affirmative that the outdoor environment has a certain influence on infant development, and mature, excellent kindergarten outdoor spatial design is beneficial to the healthy and happy growth of children.(2) Since the kindergarten is the most important space for children’s (3-6 years old) studies and caring, during outdoor spatial design for kindergartens, we should pay attention to the interdisciplinary studies between outdoor spatial design, and preschool childhood education and child psychology. Moreover, the design should consider not only children’s needs, but also the requests of kindergarten teacher, so as to create a scientific, safe and applicable kindergarten outdoor activities space.(3) Through the investigation on the source materials of 16 kindergartens in Chengdu region, the author of this thesis proposes the kindergarten landscape after-use appraisal criteria based on’7C theory.’7C means:characteristics, environment, continuous, change, flexible, clear, and challenge. With said after-use appraisal criterion, optimization could be proposed to the kindergarten outdoor spatial design accordingly.(4) The author of this thesis also proposes a set of kindergarten outdoor spatial design approach, which is referred as "Six Modular Design Strategy", including "functional venue modular design strategy", "health cultivation modular design strategy", "language training modular design strategy", "social cultivation module design strategy", "scientific training modular design strategy" and "art training modular design strategy". The author argues that future landscape design of children’s outdoor activity space can be more diverse, complex, functional and fun under the premise of its basic function.(5) The author of this thesis adopts the outdoor spatial design for Tian Li Guangyuan Kindergarten as the case of intensive studies. The sectorization of its outdoors space is mainly divided into centralized activity area, activity areas for different age groups, and games paths. Meanwhile, detailed design is completed on the aspects of space and function for said venues. Through the intensive analysis and detail design of this case, the author hopes to present some thoughts and reference to the outdoor spatial design for other kindergartens.