Creating Children’s Environments that Inspire and Instruct

Ro Logrippo

As the author of In My World: Designing Living & Learning Environments for the Young, I take pride in my work being reviewed for this academic website dedicated to children’s design. Because CYE kindly invites author feedback, I appreciate being able to expand upon the review so the full intent and scope of my work are understood.

First, I wrote In My World to demonstrate what a dozen years of research and writing about children’s residential environments impressed upon me: that home environments for the young do not need to be mini-kingdoms shaped from the latest decorating trends. Instead, they can be places that support learning in an engaging way.

As teachers know, education must continue beyond the classroom, and home is the best place to build upon school lessons since children spend more time at home than anywhere else.

I first became aware of the “living and learning environments” approach to children’s home design through the late children’s designer Tony Torrice, ASID, whose background in child psychology and early childhood education gave him a unique perspective on spaces for young people. (He and I were business partners and co-authored the work on his theories titled In My Room: Designing For and With Children.)

Second, as In My World and my website at www.msro.com/ro illustrate with photos, environments in which children learn as they grow do not need to be complicated or costly. It is easy to reinforce life lessons through low-key design. For instance, a ceiling mobile of the planets can spark scientific discovery about the universe. A doorway curtain with cutouts for theatrical play can trigger communication skills.

Some In My World settings reflect environments designers created for and with their own children, but at least two-thirds of all the projects featured were undertaken for outside clients. In every instance, photo selections were based upon how well the image demonstrated a good design concept for a child’s room rather than upon whose room it happened to be. My intent was always to show rooms that were real rather than staged. Of the 134 images chosen, 95 percent are real children’s rooms.

A final point I’d like to make is that the book purposely focuses on inexpensive quick-change ideas more than permanent decoration. It’s wise to forgo theme rooms with elaborate murals and overdone fantasy motifs not only because they tend to be parent-focused, as the reviewer notes, but also because they tend to lock in a look that subsequently stifles a child’s own imagination. Design elements that can be easily altered allow a room to keep pace with a child’s physical, mental and emotional development.

Ro Logrippo is an award-winning design author, researcher and lecturer on environments for the young. An internationally syndicated columnist, she has for many years interviewed educators, psychologists and other experts to determine how design influences development.