Where can children play in the city these days? It is a problem that parents – sadly, mainly mothers – have been grappling with ever since schools and nurseries were closed due to the Covid crisis. One of the things that has come to light is that our cities still pay little heed to the needs of their younger residents. Yet leading architects such as Aldo van Eyck and Le Corbusier set a good example long ago. A brief history and some encouraging examples.

You can’t open a book on architecture for children without coming across the same names. When it comes to pedagogy, Wilhelm Fröbel, Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori are fixtures. As early as the nineteenth century, Fröbel argued that children are not miniature adults, but have their own ways of thinking and behaving. Piaget developed this into a theory of development. Montessori linked it to a form of education and was the first to seek out spaces adapted for children.