Children’s Relationships with their Outdoor Living Space: an example of Orphanage Children in Kerman, Iran

The focus of this study is on orphans who spend a significant part of their lives in orphanages. The impact of physical settings on children’s happiness and satisfaction as well as their development is a significant issue, so it is important to find out orphans’ view about their physical surrounding environment and its restorative quality and their needs in relation to the orphanage outdoor spaces to support their activities and aesthetic preferences. Thus exploring a relationship between children's satisfaction, perceived restorative potential and their preferred design features of the orphanage outdoor spaces, is the aim of this research. A total of 126 children, both boys and girls, aged between 7 and 17 years from three private orphanages in Kerman, Iran, as well as children’s mentors participated in this research. The outdoor space of these orphanages was big, medium and small in size. A new, multi-method approach called ‘Jourchin’ method was developed using different forms of data collection, including observation, semi-structured interview, drawing and photography to achieve a holistic and comprehensive result. A valid and reliable ‘Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS)’ was developed and used with the orphans to measure the restorative potential of the orphanages’ outdoor space based on children’s perception. Children’s use of the orphanage outdoor space, different types of activities and play that children engage in the outdoor space, their interaction with landscape elements of these environments, as well as their favourite places, along with children’s perception, satisfaction and preferences of the outdoor space of their living environment were investigated in this study. Conducting this research in addition to increase the body of knowledge by adding more comparative data relating to the outdoor space of the orphanages, especially in the context of Iran, can also help the development of children and improving their physical and mental health by suggesting some recommendations related to improving restorative quality of the orphanages’ outdoor spaces.