EMBEDDING SUSTAINABILITY PRINCIPLES IN THE MINDSET OF CHILDREN THROUGH CREATING NATURE-INTERACTIVE PHYSICAL SPACES

The natural world is one of the most important factors that shape the maturity of children. However, the results of a recent survey that was conducted on 12,000 parents from 10 different countries showed that one third of children between the ages of 5 to 12 years spend less than 30 minutes outside every day. This survey and other relevant studies have highlighted the problem of the lack of childrens’ interaction with their surrounding environment and nature in general. One of the major role players who can make a difference in resolving children-environment interaction is the architecture designer who is the one responsible for creating physical spaces for children. The objective of this paper is thus to investigate the role of architecture in the creation of spaces for children that can act as a tool in itself, which could promote both tangible and intangible sustainability concepts. A literature review was conducted in order to study the principles of sustainability and how to integrate nature into a physical space for children through a number of analyzed case studies. Findings of this paper were based on a double perception including literature and designers. It was indicated that children are generally interested in the idea of integrating nature to their physical space.


Introduction
Sustainability became a substantial topic in the last few years all over the world where our global future relies on it. This is due to the rapid increase in numbers of inappropriate buildings built that destroy nature and causes overconsumption of natural resources. Sustainability is defined as the capability to fulfill the present needs without harming the environment, depleting natural resources and compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Roberston, 2014). Fig. (1) shows the three main pillars of sustainability: Figure 1: Sustainability 3 Main Pillars, (Hamdan, 2013) In order to cover and apply all the points of sustainability, it is important to understand the meaning of each pillar. Firstly, environmental sustainability is to make use of the environmental resources for meeting the present human needs without reducing its capacity to permit people to live well, both now and in the future. Examples on environmental sustainability are consumption and production of energy, pollution and management of water and waste of food.
Social sustainability is the ability of developing processes and structures which meet the needs of the present people and also support the capability of the future generations in having healthy communities. Examples on social sustainability are the working and labor conditions, cultural heritage, health of community and social equity.
Finally, economic sustainability is applying different strategies for utilizing existing resources efficiently to achieve over the long term a responsible and beneficial balance. Examples on economic sustainability are minimizing the waste, steady economic growth and allocating resources equitably (Morris, 2016).
Although sustainability has been categorized into three pillars, the aspects of those pillars could be divided into 2 categories which are "tangible" and "intangible". Tangible is indisputably defined as the thing that is real and touchable, not imaginary and visionary. Examples to such sustainable aspects that could be added to the tangible category are the conservation of natural resources, passive designs and recycling. While intangible is indisputably defined as the thing that has no appearance, not touchable, not defined and clear to the mind but it could be observed and identified by sense. Examples to such an aspect includes the conservation of cultural ideas and biophilia (Oxford, 2016).
Several research showed that a daily connection of humans with nature has a high positive influence on humans such as an increase in creativity and the ability to concentrate and it decreases stress and irritability. This daily connection also reinforces the values of respecting, conserving and taking care of nature (Bruno Duarte . Exposing children to the natural world and teaching them of the importance of environmental sustainability is the key to shaping those children to be better citizens of the world.
Biophilia literally means the love of living things. More advanced, it means that there is an instinctive bond between human and nature. This bond is proved, for example, by the captivate feeling we have when crackling fires and crashing waves. Biophilic design is extended from the meaning of the word Biophilia. The aim of this design is to integrate nature into spaces for connecting human to nature. This design is recognized after finding out the highly positive impact nature could have on human health, education, creativity and wellbeing (Bruno Duarte .

Research Problem
Nowadays Children have no respect and appreciation for nature and its value due to being detached from it by spending most of their times indoors, where most of those indoor areas are full of manmade and artificial materials. In the late 20th century and early 21st century, this problem was widely spread out all over the world due to the release of technology that attracts humans, especially children, attentions. Such technologies that attract children are video games, TV's, computers, etc.
In general, individuals in the western society spend around 90% of their time indoors (Roberston, 2014). In addition, lately a survey was conducted on 12,000 parents from 10 different countries. The result of the survey shows that one-third of children in the age between the ages of 5 to 12 years spent less than 30 minutes every day outside (Martinko,2016).
Classrooms are mostly designed with manmade objects and rarely where you could find anything related to nature, not even daylight. This created a big gap between children and nature. Nowadays they always choose artificial, manmade objects rather than choosing natural ones. For example, children prefer going to swimming pools rather than going to sea although both are located near each other. This is due to the lack of experience they had with nature so they do not feel the positive effect of nature on them and they do not notice the difference of being connected to nature than to manmade objects. Consequently, this research will investigate the techniques of creating a space that will link children and nature to educate them about sustainability.

Research Objective
This paper's aims to create a guidelineor criteria of sustainability principles for architects to follow. Those guidelines are formed to produce a sustainable, nature-interactive educational space. This is for embedding sustainability principles in the mindset of children and for reconnecting children to nature.
Human behavior affects the environment in a negative way and this shows that humans are not aware of how the status of the environment could affect us. For this reason, humans should get reconnected to nature in order to respect it and understand it and they should be aware of sustainability and how nature could be preserved. The specific category of humans that this should be applied to is children. As Frederick Douglass said "It is easier to build up a child than it is to repair an adult". For teaching children about sustainability principles and conservation of nature they should experience those principles and get connected to nature by living in it. This is applied by integrating both sustainability and nature into one of the physical spaces that children spend most of their time in, which is school.
Forming a sustainability guideline and criteria to have a nature interactive educational space through 3 different phases that are illustrated in figure (2).  What is the role of an architect in producing a generation that is aware of the value and importance of nature?

Value of Research
The importance of this research is the scarcity in research in providing guidelines of integrating nature by sustainable aspects. There also is a noticable gap in research that explains the tangible and intangible concepts of sustainability. In addition, this research topic is a present topic and it is vital as the worldwide is talking about applying sustainability and biophilia in their buildings due to their need of this as a solution to many worldwide problems.

Methodology
The research utilized various methods to attain the main objective. Those methods included a literature review that tackled the principles of sustainability and nature into spaces. An analytical study has also been applied on two international case studies.

Defining Sustainability Aspects through Literature Review
This part of the paper discuss different approaches in literature that dealt with sustainability. Existing literature was reviewed including research papers that explain different general aspects of sustainability such as passive techniques. Those papers also discuss the sustainability aspects that are integrated into educational spaces such as the site aspect and the arrangement of classrooms and its furniture (flexibility) and finally, the research papers define biophilia and its relation to sustainability.
In the period from 2010 to 2017, most of the research papers are published and a few were published before 2010. This shows that sustainability is a topic that was onluy recently revived. This statistic is shown in fig. (3).  Biophilia is one of the intangible sustainability aspects that means the love of living things. In the next section, the aspects and principles of sustainability and biophilia will be identified.

Summary of Sustainability Aspect in Literature Review
Sustainability has 3 main pillars, each pillar has different aspects under it. Those aspects could be classified into tangible and intangible. "Architecture as pedagogy" (Orr, 1993), a phrase that describes the capability of learning from buildings and not only in it. This is done by integrating sustainability to buildings in which we spend most of our time. Schools are one of the most places that children spend their time in. That is why fig. (5) illustrates that most of the research papers mention sustainability within educational spaces. The sustainable aspect that mostly has been discussed is biophilia and its idea of integrating nature to physical spaces. However, (Seda Tounk and Kutlu Sevinc Kayihan, 2012) and (Ahmed Elseragy; Amira Elnokaly and Mohammed pg. 7 Gabr, 2011) discussed 2 other aspects of sustainability. Figure (6) shows the percentage of papers that discussed the aspect of biophilia compared to the other aspects.   Sus-tainability is also to have a flexible space that is capable of being changed in future and allows various activities to be held in without cost or inconvenience.

Relation between Biophilia and Sustainability:
Biophilia means the love of living things. Furthermore, that means humans are originally in love with nature. Due to the connection of biophilia and nature, Figure (7) illustrates that most of the papers give a hint that biophilia should be added under the environmental sustainability pillar as it works with integrating nature to physical spaces. Nevertheless, a convincing opposite opinion was proposed by (Dias, BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY -BIOPHILIC AND, 2015) who claimed that biophilia could also be found under the economic sustainable pillar and that is due to biophilia's effect in improving the performance of humans and that would increase the income of the building the physical space if it was a profitable physical space. In my opinion, biophilia falls in both the two pillars but it is mainly related to the environmental sustainability pillar.

Analysis of International Examples
As mentioned before, biophilia is one of the intangible sustainability aspects. According to recent studies, integrating biophilia in educational spaces improves the performance of children in studying and increasing their creativity. Also applying biophilia on buildings reconnect children to nature and teach them about sustainability. This part of the paper consists of an analytical study on international educational spaces that has sustainability aspects. One of the pg. 10 sustainability aspects that is applied is biophilia, where nature is integrated with the project. The case studies are analysied according to a criteria created from the findings of the literature review.

Nature and Environmental Learning Center (NME)
This case study is located in Amsterdam. The aim of the project is to serve as a learning space and an educational tool where it teach stu-dents about environment, sustainability and gardening. Table (3) il-lustrate many of the sustainability principles and biophilic design principles that have been applied on the building. The sustainability principles are clarified in figure (10).  A nook for a bat is placed on the exterior West wall.

Principles of other Sustainability Aspects
Shape and Form  The form consist of a slanted roof.
 This slat is carefully placed on the site to help achieve optimal solar orientation and gives children the chance to see solar panels up close.
Material  Wood used in the interior space was left untreated to reinforced the connection with nature.  The Green School The case study is located in Indonesia, Bali. This case study shows the role of the architect in teaching sustainability.
Where the aim of the designers and the environmentalists John and Cynthia Hardy, who designed this sustainable school, was to encourage communities to live sustainably. This building has a high connection with the environment that the result of the building is that it produced a holistic green community that causes children to be more engaged with the environment and educate them to be more curious and passionate about plant and the environment. Table 4 and figure (11) shows how this school was built sustainably and how was it built to motivate people about sustainability.

Principles of Biophilic Aspect
Greenery  The building is located within green area that from every point in the building there is a view to green space.
Playgrounds  Green open space playground that is surrounded by long trees of the jungle.
Outdoor Classrooms/Learning areas  The whole building has no walls  Sails are used when needed to keep out wind and rain. This is said to be controlling the climate which is opposite to climate control.
 Rice paddies where kids learn to how to grow rice.
Site  Located within a jungle that is rich with native plants and trees.
 Located next to sustainable organic gardens.

Principles of other Sustainability Aspects
Shape and Form  The form of the roof in the layout view is organic. Where it is taking the form of three nautili spiraling in-to one another Material  The whole building was construct of liner meters of bamboo without the use of heavy machinery.
 Traditional mud used for walls  Local grass are used as building material.
Lighting  Due to the absence of walls there is plenty of natural light in the build-ing for daytime.
 A 3.75m skylights at the top of each tower.
Ventilation  The orientation of the building causes both the wet and dry sea-son winds to cool the people inside the building.
Renewable energy/ Passive techniques  Bamboo sawdust hot water and cooking system.

Conclusion
This paper aimed to investigate the role of architecture in the creation of spaces for children that can act as a tool of teaching in itself, and which could promote both tangible and intangible sustainability concepts. Through the findings of the literature review and the analysed international case studies the objective of the paper was partly tackled as it clarified the sustainability principles that architects could implement in educational spaces to have a sustainable space that act as a teaching tool. The limitation of this paper is in not being able to investigate the effect of the sustainable educational spaces on children on the long-term. Studies cannot be conducted on children if they will keep being aware of sustainability and applying it in their life or as they get old and away from the space or they will lose the values they had learned from the space. Finally, as science evolves and new technologies get discovered, it is recommended that the produced sustainability guideline should be continuously renewed and investigated in order to keep on having an efficient guideline for architects to follow where some criteria could be added or removed.