The social dimensions of space in school environment

Children’s patterns of behavior in the school environment, conditioned by various levels of individual or group needs, represent the basic modalities of their relationship towards the immediate, both social and physical, environment. This paper studies the connection between the behavior of school children, whose relationships with their given social environment can take various forms, and certain spatial characteristics of elementary schools. The results indicate that there is a need to achieve a balanced relationship between a strictly defined and an open form of the physical environment in order to create conditions in which school children will express their current orientation and attitude toward their immediate social environment through their behavior in that particular physical environment. This includes the organization of a dynamic and shifting environment, spatial planning which needs to enable a greater degree of privacy in certain zones and the organization of spatial flow which enables adequate visual communication between the school children and the flexible structure of the space meant for education.