Design for children

Reflect Architecture has renovated a house for a young family living in Toronto, Canada, by brightening its truncated interiors and twisting a blue slide through its centre.

The designers put fun elements, such as clouds above an indoor swimming pool and soft play areas in the waiting rooms, to help distract children who could be nervous or feeling unwell.

Design studio Integrated Field has created colourful arched interiors filled with animals and clouds to provide an enjoyable experience for children at a hospital in Samut Sakhon, Thailand.

Dutch designer Studio Lancelot has created a series of school chairs that encourage children to frequently change seating positions in the classroom.

Studio Lancelot's Active Classroom seating encourages children to move.

The architects hope that giving the boys and girls who study at Noor E Mobin G2 Primary School the freedom to roam and play will add to their educational experience and help the students mix. The unique layout and its pedagogical goals relate to the wider program of the Noor E Mobin NGO, which is to provide a free education that nurtures talent over rote learning and produces "decent citizens".

Both children and adults can benefit from the designs, said the designers, creating an alignment between how grown-ups perceive organising and how children perceive creative play. IKEA and Lego also hope it will prevent parents from feeling the need to tidy up while the kids are still playing, as the two will coincide.

The Bygglek storage collection comprises one set of three small boxes, two sets of larger boxes – each with lids and fronts lined with Lego studs – and one set of Lego bricks. The collaborative collection aims to "encourage play and infuse more fun" into tidying up and organising the home by giving children a box of lego that is both a building platform and a place to store the pieces or display them as sculptures.

IKEA and Lego have collaborated to create Bygglek, storage boxes that aim to turn tidying into a game with stud-covered lids kids can top with their own creations.

Inside, patients and visitors will be greeted by a timber-lined atrium containing circulation and a play area for children. Referred to by the studio as the "vertical secret garden", this will offer patients a playful distraction from their treatment.

B+H Architects' design, developed in collaboration with ECADI, will prioritise creating a "micro-landscape" that weaves in and around the hospital. Composed of gardens and play areas, this is to help children engage with nature and establish a playful, unintimidating medical environment.

In Children's Playspace, all the plywood is sanded and clear stained, ​and covered in non-VOC (volatile organic compounds) natural stain paint, in order to make it safe for the children.

Architensions said the project took cues from other architect-designed playgrounds such as the structures architect Aldo van Eyck's built in his series of of Amsterdam playscapes and the never-built Contoured Playground Japanese American artist and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi designed to encourage freeform play.

To assemble the mini-constructions, kids punch-out the individual parts that comprise the object and follow directions that explain where to fold and glue the paper to turn it into a three-dimensional toy.

Cardkits are paper toys made with card stock that children assemble themselves, and can then use to build their own miniature cities.

Graphic designer Anther Kiley has created a kit for children to construct buildings, vehicles, furniture and tiny fish figures using paper and glue.