Emily place kindergarten. Competition entry for Auckland Architecture Association Cavalier Bremworth Awards 10
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Auckland will densify, but Aucklanders are skeptical that quality of life can be maintained in a dense city. Proliferation of poor-quality city apartments has reinforced this skepticism. It is not enough to simply pack in more living quarters. For a viable, denser city, the whole range of urban and suburban programmes need to be reconsidered – the Ministry of Education, for example, has recently begun planning for an urban school in the central city. Kindergartens in New Zealand are a suburban typology, typically following the domestic pattern of house, verandah, and yard. Children learn to learn through play. Play is experimental and provisional engagement with other people, places, or things. Friedrich Fröbel, the instigator of the kindergarten movement, prescribed a series of tactile exercises aimed to help children develop spatial skills by slowing down perception. Emily Place Kindergarten is not a passive territory to be explored, but a dynamic system in which children participate. It is a space that children can affect; a medium for their developing sense of the world and their place in it.