Resham Mehta

About Resham Mehta

I am a passionate Landscape Architect. During my tenure at Kishore D. Pradhan:…

Experience

1. Research Fellow

   Arup

   Nov 2022 — Present

   As a society we intuitively know that playing is important to children. However, we seldom associate play with learning. Learning according to most parents is associated with acquiring a new skill such as identifying body parts, differentiating between colours, memorizing alphabets, counting, writing, etc. Parents often believe that playing is only for fun and involves no actual learning. This is not true.In her TEDX Talks, Professor Doris Fromberg, Director of Early Childhood Teacher Education at Hofstra University said, “We need to consider that young children learn in quite different ways [than adults]. They learn by comparing physical experiences, by interactions with other people and their own feelings. And they learn an enormous amount through their imagination. Play is what pulls together the logical and creative parts of the brain.”Thereby the importance of play cannot be underestimated because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Children’s play can be divided into the different categories such as Dramatic, Manipulative, Physical, Creative and Free Play.As the importance of Free Play becomes recognised and established, designers are shifting from the traditional practice of installing play-equipment to creating playscapes – spaces that stimulate creative thinking in children by allowing them to interpret, define and re-interpret the way they want to use a space – whether to climb or slide or roll or to try everything. With the aim of designing for free play, we also observe a trend of deriving cues from natural settings for creating playscapes that brings the urban child closer to nature – a valuable experience in the 21st Century concrete jungles. This research aims at defining these standards for designing playscapes-areas for free play based on neuroscience studies, physical development of children and their behaviour across different ages.