Sensing Space for Children
Sensing Space for Children
Mar 4, 2025
Mar 4, 2025
Sensing Space for Children is the Snøhetta Foundation’s initiative to bring architecture and design into the everyday lives of young learners. The program invites children to explore how they move, build, and communicate — discovering that space is something we feel and understand long before we can define it.
At the heart of the program lies a simple idea: movement is our first language. Long before we speak in words, we speak through motion. When a child climbs under a table, reaches over a wall, or walks between friends, they are already using prepositions — under, over, between — to make sense of the world. These small acts form a universal grammar of space that connects all people, cultures, and ages.
By combining prepositions and movement with craft, play, and imagination, Sensing Space helps children transform abstract ideas into lived experiences. Through guided workshops, children draw, build, dance, and collaborate, learning to see space not as something fixed, but as something they shape through curiosity and care.
The program brings together teachers, designers, and artists to create environments that nurture spatial literacy — the ability to think, feel, and express through space. This literacy goes beyond architecture: it builds empathy, cooperation, and confidence. When children move together, they learn to listen to one another. When they build together, they learn to share ideas and find common ground.
Sensing Space for Children has been piloted in Oslo, where pupils from Gamlebyen School built wooden boats and installations inspired by prepositions like on, under, and through. On the roof of the Oslo Opera House, they tested how language, body, and structure come together to tell stories about balance, gravity, and trust.
Every workshop begins with a simple question: How does it feel to be here? From that question, a world opens up — one where learning happens not just in the classroom, but in every step, gesture, and shared discovery.
Through this program, the Snøhetta Foundation aims to make creative education more accessible and inclusive, giving every child the chance to learn through movement, imagination, and design — to sense space, and in doing so, sense themselves in the world.
Sensing Space for Children is the Snøhetta Foundation’s initiative to bring architecture and design into the everyday lives of young learners. The program invites children to explore how they move, build, and communicate — discovering that space is something we feel and understand long before we can define it.
At the heart of the program lies a simple idea: movement is our first language. Long before we speak in words, we speak through motion. When a child climbs under a table, reaches over a wall, or walks between friends, they are already using prepositions — under, over, between — to make sense of the world. These small acts form a universal grammar of space that connects all people, cultures, and ages.
By combining prepositions and movement with craft, play, and imagination, Sensing Space helps children transform abstract ideas into lived experiences. Through guided workshops, children draw, build, dance, and collaborate, learning to see space not as something fixed, but as something they shape through curiosity and care.
The program brings together teachers, designers, and artists to create environments that nurture spatial literacy — the ability to think, feel, and express through space. This literacy goes beyond architecture: it builds empathy, cooperation, and confidence. When children move together, they learn to listen to one another. When they build together, they learn to share ideas and find common ground.
Sensing Space for Children has been piloted in Oslo, where pupils from Gamlebyen School built wooden boats and installations inspired by prepositions like on, under, and through. On the roof of the Oslo Opera House, they tested how language, body, and structure come together to tell stories about balance, gravity, and trust.
Every workshop begins with a simple question: How does it feel to be here? From that question, a world opens up — one where learning happens not just in the classroom, but in every step, gesture, and shared discovery.
Through this program, the Snøhetta Foundation aims to make creative education more accessible and inclusive, giving every child the chance to learn through movement, imagination, and design — to sense space, and in doing so, sense themselves in the world.
