What does it mean to design a space dedicated to learning that truly starts with the people who will use it?

When it comes to educational spaces, the design involves much more than the layout of functions or the choice of shapes, colors, and materials. Factors such as a child’s scale, opportunities for movement and autonomy, the rhythm of the day, and relationships all come into play. Environmental comfort and sensory quality, in turn, become design elements in their own right.

The renovation project for the L’Abbraccio daycare center in Ghedi, developed by DVArea, offers a particularly interesting case study. The project involves transforming a portion of an existing elementary school into a space for children aged 0 to 2 and brings together architecture, pedagogy, behavioral observation, and environmental quality.

In this new interview for MeM, we delve into the project alongside Marta Olivieri of DVArea to understand its process, the design choices made, and, above all, the questions that inspired them.

MeM: “Many professionals begin a project by studying functions, spaces, and constraints. In a building designed for children, where did you choose to start? And how did that choice shape the entire design process?”

M.O.:”We realized very early on that a school isn’t designed starting with the building, but with the people who will inhabit it.

From the very beginning, we understood that the complexity of the project required a broader perspective than simply complying with industry regulations. Even the colors, shapes, and materials commonly associated with spaces for children represented only part of the issue.

First and foremost, we needed to understand what it meant to live, educate, and learn in those spaces. The issue, therefore, expanded from a strictly architectural one to include pedagogical themes related to children’s development and education and, more generally, to the educational culture of the community for which we were designing. Having an educational specialist as a permanent member of our team allows us to integrate the design perspective with the pedagogical one from the very beginning, treating educational practices, needs, and cultures as genuine design materials.

Before translating these needs into design choices, we delve deeply into the service’s policies and the culture of the people who will experience the spaces. Through interviews, focus groups, and observation, we seek to bring to light some fundamental questions: “What is the concept of a teacher? What is the concept of a child? What is the concept of a school? What role should be assigned to families, and what role to the city?”

Through interviews, focus groups, and observation, we seek to bring to light some fundamental questions: “What is our conception of a teacher? What is our conception of a child? What is our conception of school? What role should families play, and what role should the city play?”

In other words, we seek to delve into the heart of educational practices to understand how professional attitudes translate into an “educational materiality” composed of spaces, bodies, and materials.

We have complemented this with site visits and direct observation to understand how people move, what activities recur, what relationships are formed, and what informal uses and customs characterize these environments. Reviewing documents and educational policies also becomes an integral part of this exploratory phase.

Only after gathering information and expectations, observing practices, and understanding the educational project do we begin to translate these findings into spatial and environmental requirements: relationships between spaces, levels of autonomy, opportunities for appropriation and adaptation, sensory qualities, and conditions of comfort.

In the design of the L’Abbraccio daycare center in Ghedi, this process also had to address a specific challenge: transforming a portion of an existing elementary school into a space truly designed for children aged 0 to 2 years.

The project goes beyond a simple redistribution of functions; it represents a reinterpretation of a building originally designed for a different user group, achieved by modifying its proportions, the relationships between spaces, the openings, and the ways in which it interacts with the exterior.

We observed how the existing daycare center operates, studied the new spaces, analyzed the Service Charter, and interviewed the coordinator and the municipal social services manager. The information gathered then became design input, guiding the layout around several key themes: care, safety, flexibility, fluidity, and transparency.”

Image credit: DVArea

MeM: “Every project influences the way people move, interact, and experience a space. What behaviors did you hope to encourage through architecture, and what design strategies did you adopt to make them possible?”

M.O.: “We could draw up a very long list of possibilities that we aim to support through the design of these spaces, but I believe it’s important to start with one principle: architecture does not dictate behavior, but it makes certain behaviors more likely than others.

In line with what was said earlier, the behaviors we want to encourage are defined together with the people who will inhabit the space. Every educational community, in fact, has its own goals, practices, and needs, linked to its educational and pedagogical perspective and to the sociocultural and territorial context in which the school is situated.

However, if we were to look for a common thread connecting our projects, there are certain “distinctive features” that recur frequently.

One is certainly autonomy. The Montessori principle of “help me to do it myself” reminds us how much space and furnishings can influence a child’s scope for action. In an environment designed to their scale, the opportunities offered by the space must be clear: the child must be able to understand what they can do, reach materials and places independently, make choices, and find their way.

The space thus becomes a tool that supports action and, through action, learning.

Another fundamental aspect concerns the environmental conditions that can support these behaviors: acoustics, lighting, views, air quality, temperature, and the presence of Nature are not merely technical specifications, but factors that affect concentration, the ability to self-regulate, and the capacity to recharge.

These aspects are important for children, but they have equally significant implications for the work of teachers and educators. A child who can move and act with greater autonomy requires less constant adult intervention; a space that allows for the distribution of small groups while maintaining visual connections, on the other hand, enables the teacher to differentiate activities and respond more precisely to different needs.

Even a simple transparent partition between two spaces can become an educational tool: it allows for maintaining visual connections between different groups and offers teachers greater opportunities to structure activities.

In Ghedi, at the L’Abbraccio daycare center, we focused on the children’s perceptual and physical scale: the furnishings are designed with the ergonomics of the 0–2-year-old age group in mind. The existing openings, originally designed for a primary school setting, were redesigned by lowering the visual threshold almost to the floor, so that even a young child could maintain visual contact with the garden.

The window, once a simple element of the building envelope, thus becomes a means of orientation, exploration, and connection with the outside world.

We did not merely imagine this relationship: we verified it through a visibility analysis conducted from an observation height of 60 centimeters—consistent with that of a child sitting or crawling.

It is in this sense that space can become a “third educator”: it does not replace the educational relationship, but creates the conditions for certain practices to emerge more easily than others.”

MeM: “In a building designed for children, which aspects of their daily lives did you observe most closely before designing the spaces?

Time is the primary material of design.”

M.O.: “It may seem like an unusual statement, but time also shapes and gives value to the spaces we design. Time and space are two deeply interconnected dimensions.

When we enter a school, we observe the daily routines and the time required for transitions. We consider the times when spaces are in use and when they are not, as well as the time a teacher needs to tidy up or set up a space before and after an activity. We also observe the rhythm of recess and mealtime.

It is a dense rhythm, made up of waiting, bursts of activity, overlaps, and fresh starts.

Observing it also means identifying the friction points of daily life: overly complex transitions, spaces used for only a few hours, areas that require constant reconfiguration, or activities that interfere with one another.

The project can intervene precisely here, seeking to simplify transitions, reduce activity preparation times, allow for different uses of the same space, and provide spaces capable of accommodating different rhythms. Because schedules vary from one age group to another and, above all, differ from child to child.

Another aspect we observe with great attention is relationships: between adults and children, among children, among adults themselves, and between the educational community and the local area.

These relationships also have a spatial dimension: they can be facilitated or hindered by distance, visibility, proximity, and the ability to choose how much to open up or how much to withdraw.

Time and relationships thus traverse space and give it meaning. Designing them means creating environments that, in addition to hosting activities, support the complexity of daily life that takes shape within them.”

Image credit: DVArea

MeM:“When designing for children, it’s inevitable to grapple with needs that change throughout the day. How did you translate this variability into architectural choices that can accommodate different moments of play, learning, social interaction, and concentration?”

M.O.: “This is one of the most important challenges when designing spaces for children: accommodating needs, activities, and ways of interacting that change not only throughout the day but also from child to child.

For us, the solution does not lie in multiplying functions or designing a specific environment for each activity. Rather, we seek to design environmental and socio-environmental qualities capable of expanding the possibilities for using the space.

Consider, for example, a space with good acoustics that can be darkened and features easily accessible materials and a small storage area. In the morning, it can become a place for psychomotor exploration; after lunch, a space for rest; and in the afternoon, a light workshop.

It is not the function that defines it once and for all, but the combination of its characteristics.

At the L’Abbraccio nursery, for example, we also worked on the spatial layout: in the classrooms, the existing flat suspended ceilings were removed, leaving the roof slope visible. The space thus takes on a more domestic and recognizable, almost archetypal dimension, akin to the form of a home, and offers children a richer and more nuanced perception of their surroundings.

This is where the concept of multisensory design becomes interesting: designing environments characterized by different sensory qualities—light, sound, materials, shapes, and levels of openness or privacy—allows people to recognize and choose conditions best suited to their individual characteristics and the moment they are experiencing.

This approach allows us to move beyond the traditional “multipurpose space,” which is often neutral and lacking in distinct character. Flexibility, in fact, does not necessarily arise from an indistinct space that is theoretically capable of serving any purpose, but rather from the presence of recognizable qualities that make different interpretations possible.

Designing in this way therefore means working simultaneously on inclusion and environmental comfort, reducing stressors and increasing opportunities for choice and adaptation. The space thus offers different conditions that children and educators can reinterpret over time.

In the design of the daycare center, this principle translates into a veritable “micro-city of childhood,” where spaces for social interaction and calm, exploration and refuge, as well as individual and collective spaces, coexist.

The napping area is designed to serve different purposes throughout the day; the large classroom connects directly with the activity rooms; and the portico functions as a true covered outdoor room—a natural extension of the interior spaces.”

Image credit: DVArea

MeM:“Is there a design detail that probably goes unnoticed by visitors to the building, but that you consider one of the most important elements for the well-being of children and educators?”

M.O.: “Rather than a single detail, I’d say it’s environmental comfort: a set of conditions that, when well-designed, go almost unnoticed.

If a space has good acoustics, dynamic and diffused natural light, an appropriate temperature, and good air quality, those who occupy it are unlikely to consciously think about these characteristics. Yet, after spending many hours in that environment, they perceive its effects.

Perhaps the best comfort is precisely that which requires no attention. It supports what we’re doing without interfering, reduces fatigue, and frees up energy for other things.

That seemingly intangible sensation, however, stems from very concrete variables. These can be predicted using models, simulated during the design phase, and—once the building is in use—measured and verified.

The quality of a built environment is perceived through the body, but it can also be observed through data.

At the L’Abbraccio daycare center, this meant working simultaneously on noise, air quality, light, temperature, and humidity, as well as on the presence of nature and the quality of visual connections.

Comfort was therefore approached as an overall condition capable of reducing stressors and supporting daily rhythms and activities.

A comfortable space is, in this sense, a light space: it supports activities and relationships without taking center stage.

We’ve all experienced places we want to return to without knowing exactly why. It’s important to us that children, teachers, and educators be able to experience environments like these: spaces that can reduce stressors and free up resources and energy for learning, relationships, and care.“

MeM:“If you were to visit this building ten years from now, what kind of behavior would you see that would make you think, ‘The project is working exactly as we had imagined’?”

M.O.: “The project works as we had envisioned it if, after ten years, educational practices have been able to evolve and the space has been able to support this transformation.

During the design process, we seek to bring to light existing practices, as well as aspirations, possibilities, and future scenarios. The project should therefore not be limited to capturing a snapshot of how an educational community functions at a given moment, but rather to creating the conditions that allow it to change.

For this reason, returning after ten years, I wouldn’t want to find a school that has remained exactly as we designed it. Rather, I envision a lived-in environment, modified and interpreted by the people who inhabit it.

Children and adults might use the spaces in ways beyond what was initially imagined, adapting them to their own practices and leaving traces of the educational community’s ownership.

Classroom doors opening onto the garden, the porch used as a true outdoor room, staff finding informal spaces to interact and recharge, and families using certain areas of the preschool as community spaces: these would all be signs that the preschool is not merely used, but truly embraced.

A well-designed environment should, in fact, allow teachers to vary their teaching methods, offer children diverse opportunities for learning and social interaction, and, at the same time, maintain an open relationship with the local community.

It is in this sense that space can become a transformative force: it does not determine what will happen, but it creates conditions that are solid enough to support the quality of the experience and open enough to accommodate what we cannot yet foresee.”

Image credit: DVArea

Designing to support change

The L’Abbraccio daycare center project reminds us how architecture, pedagogy, and the observation of people can come together to shape environments capable of fostering autonomy, relationships, learning, and well-being. These spaces are designed for the present but are flexible enough to evolve alongside the communities that inhabit them.

We thank Marta Olivieri and DVArea for sharing with MeM the process, reflections, and decisions that guided the project, offering designers a concrete perspective on what it means to place people’s experiences at the heart of the project.