Children in South American Indigenous communities inhabit spaces freely, crawling on earthen floors, approaching fires, investigating anthills, and learning through bodily experience. Urban children are often confined in adult-designed environments with rules that distance them from essential sensory encounters. Architectural design that restricts spontaneous exploration reinforces physical and symbolic barriers between children and the natural world. Every child is territorially anchored, and children's cultures and identities form through relationships with the spaces and territories they inhabit. Environments, both natural and built, play a foundational role in development. Indigenous spatial practices offer knowledge to inspire architectural approaches that restore children's curiosity, autonomy, and connection to place.
In South American Indigenous communities, a child's place is wherever they choose to be. Babies crawl on the earthen floor, approach the fire, investigate anthills, and experience the world with their whole bodies. They learn by feeling: discovering limits, recognizing dangers, and gathering lessons no manual could ever teach. In urban contexts, by contrast, children are often confined to spaces designed for adults, filled with rules that-though well-intentioned-tend to distance them from essential experiences.
From an architectural perspective, this childhood with little freedom of time and movement challenges us to rethink how we shape daily environments. Why restrict spontaneous exploration to controlled settings? Why create physical and symbolic barriers between children and the natural world? And, above all, how might contemporary architecture break away from this paradigm and, inspired by Indigenous childhoods, design environments that restore to children their wild, curious, and complete dimension?
In Territorialidades Infantis ( Childhood Territorialities), the authors remind us that "every child is a child in a place," emphasizing that children's cultures are territorially anchored. This anchorage not only frames the context in which childhood unfolds but also provides the very ground of existence. In other words, children become who they are through the relationships they cultivate across the spaces and territories they inhabit, observing, participating, and reinterpreting their experiences.
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