Exploring Elementary School Children’s Interaction at the School Threshold: Evidence From Athens, Greece

Abstract

The school entrance is one of the most important places in the everyday lives of children. As an intersection between school and public realm of the city, it is characterized by gradations of porous and rigid boundaries. Depending on its function, it can serve as a threshold or as a boundary. Additionally, it is a spatial condition that facilitates a dialogue between the school and the city and draws content from both. School thresholds are important in supporting the role of the school as an important node in the city and a bridge between children’s various everyday life dynamics by demonstrating meaning as a place that is open to the community as well as to possibilities and physical interaction. In this research, we examine the role of the “realm of the in-between” between school and city through the architecture workshops for children at an Elementary School in the heart of Athens, in which we explore children’s perceptions, wishes, and ideas related to their familiar everyday places of transition from school to city and vice versa. The aim of the research is to find out: (a) What is the role of school entry today? (b) What is the children’s perception of the entrance of the school? (c) What are children’s wishes in relation to the spatial transition from city to school to better meet their needs and desires? (d) What are the specific qualities of a school entry that render it an ideal space for the interaction between children and with the space around them? and (e) How does the synergy of cinematic-architectural tools feed, enrich, and open up new possibilities in understanding and representing spatial and social phenomena?