WHERE IS CHILDREN’S ARCHITECTURE?

This post is directed to city politicians, city developers, urban planners, architects, architecture schools, researchers, and writers on city architecture.

Go to any street and look around. Do you see any particular architectural principle designed around children’s needs?

Go to the city centre.
Do you see Children’s Architecture?

Go to a shopping centre.
Do you see any clear architectural principle responding to children as independent users?

Go inside a home.
Do you see children’s architectural needs reflected in its design?

Go to a school of architecture and look at the five-year curriculum.
Is Children’s Architecture actually taught as an architectural field?

Go to municipalities and examine their urban development plans.
Where is Children’s Architecture?

Go to government ministries and examine policies and strategies.
Where is the architectural framework for children?

Go to developers’ offices and examine their projects.
Are children treated as genuine architectural users—or simply as an additional consideration?

Look at architectural conferences focused on children and the city.
How often is Children’s Architecture itself discussed as a comprehensive architectural discipline?

And look at LinkedIn and architectural publications.
How much serious discussion do we actually see about Children’s Architecture?
Isn’t this strange?

Children represent roughly 30% of the world’s population. They have their own physical, psychological, social, developmental, educational, and spatial needs.

Yet children remain remarkably underrepresented in architectural thinking—from the level of the individual building, to urban design, architectural education, research, development practice, and public policy.
Children are an established field of study in education, psychology, sociology, health, social science, environmental studies, and many other disciplines, with enormous amounts of research, policies, programmes, and practical applications.

But where is architecture?
Why has architecture remained so limited in addressing children as a comprehensive architectural subject?

Why are children so often treated as a special group to be accommodated, rather than as independent users of the entire city?

I encourage architects, professors, researchers, developers, planners, politicians, and architecture schools to participate in conferences and research communities focused on children and the city.

You may discover how rich this field is and, perhaps more importantly, you may begin to ask:
Why is architecture still so poor in Children’s Architecture?

We all need to think about the missing chair.