ABSTRACT
This chapter explains primary design criteria. This design process assumes that the designer's services have already been solicited by the client. The chapter discusses two steps: 'concept formulation' and 'design development'. It focuses on the process prior to and after the act. The next part of the design process, design development, contains the author's primary design criteria which have evolved from a series of design commissions dealing with both normal and handicapped children and are, in the author's opinion, applicable to all groups of children. Every institution for handicapped children can be defined by its behaviour settings. When the users of a play environment are handicapped, the isolation of pieces of equipment increases the fragmented quality of the place. In repeated formal observations with normal preschool children, trainable mentally retarded children and physically handicapped children, research has shown that unifying the play-yard unified the play experience and increased significantly the time spent engaged with the physical structure of the space.
