Nowadays children are losing their designations. It is necessary to make them approach friendly to library as a space of education and daily living space for reading, play, culture, and resting from childhood. For this, this study aims at reviewing fo...
Nowadays children are losing their designations. It is necessary to make them approach friendly to library as a space of education and daily living space for reading, play, culture, and resting from childhood. For this, this study aims at reviewing for offering better children's library environment and space.
In this study, four children' libraries are chosen, as they are exclusively for children with the highest distribution. After selecting them, their architectural spaces were figured out, and the characteristics were studied by observing users, interviews with them, and survey for their satisfaction.
Children's library should be space for acquiring knowledge as it plays a role for reading activities and offers various cultures and information to children, that for social activities, and that for offering regularly and continuously the best environment and diverse children's complex culture programs, motivating them to create their own culture. That is, children's library is located in the center of children's culture as a space of children's complex culture.
The previous literature on children's library shows the following spatial characteristics.
First, children's library should have various and creative spaces.
Second, children's library should consist of seating space.
Third, it should secure indoor convenience.
Fourth, it should have sufficient space for its own programs.
Fifth, it should equip spaces for parents or caregivers and for resting.
Based on the spatial characteristics of children's library, the case studies of children's library were investigated, analyzed, evaluated, and synthesized, and the following factors for architectural planning could be drawn,
First, priority in arrangement of reading space
Second, connecting seating spaces.
Third, arrangement of planar multi-user rooms.
Fourth, multiple-use of resting place.
Fifth, convenient indoor environment
In addition, children' libraries play a role for a space of children's complex culture and requires free arrangement of reading rooms for various and creative reading space, careful consideration for convenient indoor environment, and diversities of forms, materials, and designs in furniture used there.
In conclusion, based on the case studies, and users' evaluation, some of architectural planning factors in spatial characteristics required for planning to build a children's library are suggested.
First, reading rooms of children's library should be prepared for reading space in priority compared to bookshelves, in order to make children read creatively and freely.
Second, reading space of children's library should equip noise-free toddlers' reading space and conversation room.
Third, special activity space should be arranged with large planar multi-use rooms for lectures and experience activities, and club rooms for small activities.
Fourth, there should be noise-free and multi-use resting room within library, with spatial consideration for parents or caregivers.
Fifth, as floor of children's library is used by children for their seating and laying down, it is necessary to prepare for appropriate floor heating and materials available for children's seating activities, and to connect each space as seating one.
Sixth, children's library should convenient indoor environment. In particular, it should be available for sufficient natural ventilation and lighting with architectural consideration for noise.