art. 906 Structure in waterpainted

birch.

Colors: periwinkle,

turquoise, willow green.

130 x 114 x 152 cm

The tremendous importance of play in the life

of children and of adults is now universally

recognized; still under debate, however, is

the meaning of dramatic play in a child’s

experience. It appears that this kind of play

is interesting not because it “traces” that

which has happened (the past), but because

it expresses the way in which the young child

confronts and interprets the selfsame experience

in which he or she is involved.

From this emerges the importance of a type

of education that is capable of recognizing

and fostering (also through play) the symbolic

instrumentation that young children are

developing. Thus, placing value on young children’s

symbolic production means supporting

and expanding what children produce,

and that is, creating occasions, opportunities

and contexts that permit the children to

express themselves and to learn.

One of the play areas children most frequently

seek out and appreciate is the playhouse.

Ideally, a child should be offered not a house

that has been defined in minute detail, but an

archetypal object that evokes the possibilities

of a house without conditioning the child’s

inventiveness or creativity, or influencing

any modifications that the individual child or

group of children might want to make.

More than anything else, the playhouse must

be an evocative place, a theater of possible

representations, where objects suggest a

story that unfolds into multiple plots through

the children’s own interactions, modifications,

and negations.

The playhouse in its

traditional version,

brought back to

archetypal shapes

and using water-based,

abstract colors that

do not simply simulate

a traditional house.

The aim is to not limit

the children’s imagination

and ability to

invent new places

by giving them a

reductive icon of a

playhouse chosen

by adults (with a roof

the color of red clay