Early childhood educational spaces: a model proposal based on user preference in indoor-outdoor access

Children are the future of nations. The design of spaces in early childhood (3-6 years old) that witness the physical, cognitive, social, linguistic and emotional development of children when they begin to express themselves is one of the important issues to be studied within the scope of architecture. The basic tool in early childhood education unlike other developmental periods is "Play" and the use of indoor and outdoor spaces in education is effective within the scope of "Access to Play". It is an important design problem to address the educational (play) spaces of early childhood in educational institutions in the integrity of indoor and outdoor spaces and to solve them in terms of easy indoor-outdoor access. In Türkiye, early childhood educational spaces are defined in the relevant regulations as flexible solutions that can be solved together with or separately from different educational institutions. This situation brings with it the questions indoor-outdoor access of children in institutions to how they use and to what extent their spatial needs can be met in this context. Research that can be conducted within the scope of spatial access is capable of determining the positive and negative aspects of spatial solutions in terms of access relationship and revealing the appropriate arrangements. This research aims to determine the status of educational (play) space organizations in existing institutions serving early childhood, to obtain educator opinions, and to develop a "spatial access model" based on the results obtained from the spatial preferences of children who are the main users. In line with the determined purpose, the central districts of Antalya province were selected as the sample area in terms of being able to accommodate all institutions that can be an example of socioeconomic diversity in Türkiye, being located in a geography where the potential for using outdoor spaces is high depending on the sociocultural impact, and creating an easily accessible example area. A research was conducted with institutions selected randomly and variety that would provide a statistical confidence interval in the example area, and with students and educators in these institutions. A three-stage mixed method was applied within the scope of the research. In the first stage, the access relationship of early childhood educational spaces in institutions was evaluated through the "Space Syntax" method. In the second stage, the opinions of educators were obtained and evaluated based on content analysis. In the last stage, the spatial access preferences of early childhood were determined through the "visual syntax" method developed within the scope of the study. As a result of the research, "spatial access model for play-based education" suggestions have been made based on the evaluation of spatial access relations and user preferences. Educational space design with well-organized spatial access are also the reflection of scientific studies conducted in the field of education on applications. It is thought that the research will be important in terms of the results it will bring in the field of architecture as a spatial order as well as the results it will bring in the field of education with the method developed based on obtaining children preferences.