Peer-reviewed article

Redefinition of the Participation Process of the Architecture and the Child Based on Children’s Creative Thinking Abilities

Behnam Behnia, Mehran Kheirollahi, Mahdi Sahragard, Atefeh Soltanifar · 22 Sept 2020

Abstract

Statement of Problem: Architectural issues have various aspects, and creatively responding to such issues is an important criterion in evaluating quality of architectural works, thus seeking effective factors on these aspects is of special importance for prompting quality of responding to architectural issues. Nowadays, participatory architecture is a general approach which focuses on involving individuals and specialists in process of designing. In this regard, observing children’s civil rights aiming at obtaining a mutual understanding between child and designer is considered as main focus of designers to children in processes of participatory designing while frequently ignoring abilities of children’s system in areas of idea development and designing. Therefore, using abilities of children’s system in creating architectural works and its conditions is main issue in this regard.Research Question: How are theoretical foundations of effectiveness of explained in improving quality of responding to architectural issues?Research Objectives: The current study aims at introducing a new aspect of beyond general perspective of research so far conducted in this area while considering fundamental concepts in area of children thinking.Research Method: This research applies a qualitative, fundamental, and descriptive- analysis based method in addition to seven-step meta-synthesis method by Sandelowski and Barrosos. The study results indicated that architecture-child participatory thinking can be introduced as a new architect-child participation method. In this new method, product of is developed based on architecture-child interactive thinking, and role of children is upgraded from respondent to the main thinker. During design process, children make creative comments alongside architect and architect simply standardizes end product.