Functions and Features of the Residential Spaces Matching Children’s Needs

The houses which are not suitable for children’s behavioral needs and are not proportionate to their cognitive patterns cannot play a significant role in reinforcing children’s physical and mental development process. Meanwhile, living in these houses is inevitable due to numerous reasons including economy. The extreme results of this form of life can lead to consequences such as children’s overweight, spatial cognition development problems in analyzing and recognizing the environment, children’s sociability problems as well as an increase in the number of children whose physical development does not match their age range. In such situation, taking residential spaces which are suitable for children into account can be influential in their cognitive and behavioral patterns development. Therefore, the present study aims to scrutinize the appropriate features of children’s spaces through their recognition and understanding of their behavioral and cognitive characteristics. These spaces need to match their behavioral features and should meet their cognitive needs. To this end, the functions of spaces in connection with children and their influential spatial characteristics were determined through the analysis of the data collected from library resources. Thereafter, these initial features were adjusted to the opinions of architectural experts and professors. To this purpose, correlation research approach and survey questionnaire technique were applied. Finally, the achieved data was analyzed using factor analysis statistical test in SPSS software. In the end, using the findings of theoretical field studies, the necessary features of residential spaces that should be adjusted to children’s cognitive and behavioral needs were provided.