Urban Ecologies

Children’s Habitat

Understanding cities as a complex web of interrelated systems that affect the way human beings navigate the social and public realms -while considering the private as well- is essential to confront the problem of designing for them.

Through a series of situational analyses, which started from looking at the bigger picture around the assigned site, and later focusing on the specific area, a systematic design process was created, which was modified to be applied to different scales and had the ability of being able to be reiterated endlessly to follow the concept and circulation of the program.

This was decided to be centered around children, specifically a Children’s Museum and family centered residences, with the addition of schools and a women’s center.

The main idea was that children don’t have the same sense of order as adults do, and for them, the world is a constant learning experience. This led me to question the idea of what is considered practical circulation -both horizontally and vertically within each building-, experimenting with what could potentially be done to merge learning and play with urban design.