The Children's Room

The children’s room is usually not specifically planned as such. Its location is chosen simply because a typical house allows for it. But the children’s room is not defined by its physical boundaries. When a child is in the home, the entire apartment becomes the children’s room.

By observing where care of children takes place throughout a house, it becomes apparent that it manifests itself in many forms. Care does not come in one specific way. Each room in the home holds a specific relationship to care shaped by its materials, colors, and furniture.

Every room suggests particular nurturing gestures, and by recognizing them, we are inclined to perform these rituals within them. A vital part of a child's existence is play. It is a different mode of existence, one which allows children to explore the world, experiment with roles, and develop autonomy and imagination.

Play is always performative. It is pretend. A child will mirror actions it perceives especially those carried out by their caretakers. 

The project we thus propose is the performance of a home, a series of backdrops, coulisses, mimicking familiar spaces, yet being altered. Actions and behaviours being evoked, but not enforced, always as mere mirages with a backside, giving enough space to break out.

The pieces representing the rooms fit together like pieces of a puzzle. The entire unit can form a closed structure, like a toy to be assembled, rearranged, and tucked away after play.

Akin to a film set, this scenery is independent of its immediate surroundings, but still confined by the spatial boundaries around it. A grid of infrastructural elements; lamps, infrared heaters, water and electricity are introduced. These elements allow the space to be activated in various ways, generating a hierarchy of spatial conditions across the floor of the parking.

Each piece is constructed from a lightweight wooden frame structure on wheels allowing movement by users of the space. While the frontstage of each piece is colorful, designed to evoke play, the backstage remains bare, reflecting its raw concrete surroundings. It exists between the representative areas, offering a pause.

A place to step out of one’s performance and experience the stillness of the space. Through its flexibility, the installation becomes a field for appropriation through play. Like a dollhouse, it invites the user to move, assemble, and inhabit spaces.and comes alive only through interaction.

Autumn 2025

Project by: Vasco Beuchle, Rimon Ganahl, Roxanne Monnard, Maya Piwonska

Teaching team: Anna Puigjaner, Dafni Retzepi, Ethel Baraona Pohl, Lisa Maillard, Luis Úrculo, Pol Esteve Castelló, He Shen, Valentina Noce

Images: Luís Úrculo