The Role of Interior Design in Enhancing Learning Ability in a Children’s Museum Context

According to the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM), more than 341 children’s museums exist on 23 countries. The first children’s museum was Brooklyn Children’s Museum which was established in 1899. (Schofield-Bodt, C. ,1987) The philosophy of children’s museum is based on the idea of hands-on learning besides the fact of artifact based traditional museums. The focus of the study, while investigating the interdisciplinary relationship between education and interior design in the context of a children's museum, is to analyse whether the environmental design parameters suggested by the educational approaches used in public institutions for years will contribute to learning in between the 2-11 age group children if used in the design of informal educational institutions. Learning is the main target of education, so the study will search for interior design criteria that can be adapted from formal design to informal context of famous educational approaches selected as Montessori and Reggio Emilia. Selected design criteria are ‘recognizability, anthropometric design, social space and outdoor learning space.’ To finalize the paper, the architectural drawings and photos of 10 children’s museums which has different contents that are ‘Boston Children’s Museum, Chicago Children’s Museum, Incheon Children’s Science Museum, Children’s Museum of ART, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Houston Children’s Museum Indianapolis Children’s Museum, Knock-knock Children’s Museum, Muzeiko America for Bulgaria Children’s Museum, Papalote Museo Planet Play are found from the previous literature and examined with selected design criteria to be analysed qualitatively in the end. The photos and the architectural drawings of selected cases will be examined one by one by one with the selected criteria. Anthropometric design as an interior design criterion from Montessori approach, will be used to check the measurements of the interior if it is suitable for the sizes of the user groups not to interrupt learning, social spaces from Montessori approach, will be used to check the gathering places for sharing the knowledge of different age groups. Outdoor learning spaces from Montessori approach, will be used to check the integration of natural environment conditions for play and recognizability parameter from Reggio Emilia approach, will be used to check the existence of identity constructed by a specific architectural language which in turn create a sense of place. As a conclusion, it is expected to observe if the environmental design of place fo children with the principles of Montessori and Reggio Emilia education can be adapted to the selected museums’ architecture as Reggio Emilia emphasizes environment as 3rd teacher to enhance the learning process in the selected age group.