Bangalore

Abstract

Playing is an essential part of childhood as it is crucial for children’s development. It is a child’s fundamental right to play and designers have important role for providing such conducive environment. The subjective affordances provided by the space can be considered as indicator to evaluate the creative opportunities of the spatial layout. The urban play areas are majorly laden with equipment, and not much attention is paid to rest of the areas. These equipments are based on a stagnant perception of play which requires no maintenance or supervision whereas the nature of children is of unstructured play which allows the scope of discovery, exploration, creativity and risk taking. This study aims to investigate the diversity of play affordances for children’s creative development in natural play spaces and equipment-based play spaces in urban residential areas. The methodology consists of (a) identifying and comparing the subjective affordances of four different play spaces in residential areas using behavioural mapping and (b) questionnaire survey of children taking their view of play spaces into account. The results indicate positive correlation between creativity quotient and natural elements. However, the study also indicates lack of creative play areas in the overall space design which corresponds to lower creativity in children. This study will further help the landscape architects, designers, planners and policy makers to develop outdoor play spaces which inspire the creative relationship of children and nature for a holistic development.