Colors can serve as a basis to enhance creativity and imagination in the design of leisure spaces for children… Estudio AMATAM, with whom we have recently worked, has opted for this formula in the renovation of the children’s area of the Health Club Kalorias, in Linda-a-Velha.
This studio, created by young architects Manuela Tamborino and João Escaleira Amaral, brings architecture closer to art in its search for innovative solutions and creative approaches. The design of this children’s space took them, as they explain, on “a journey through time and space” in search of dreamlike images that would delve into the “creative essence”. This is the origin of this shelter where children can “unleash their creativity”. With this in mind, the intervention focused on the psychology of color to stimulate spatial and visual perception.
Although most of the existing structures were preserved in the renovation, new elements – shapes, colors, textures, graphics – were included to create a symbolism that allows you to be transported to a dreamlike reality when you enter the club’s children’s area. This challenge forced them to move away from some of the usual patterns of architecture to break the spatial balance with the intention of creating a playful and different space.
The children’s area of the Kalorias Health Club has been divided into several rooms with different functions: the multipurpose room, the reading room, dedicated to school support, the Visual Arts room, mainly for arts and crafts and, finally, a more playful room, dedicated to fun and physical games. Each room has unique features and is designed to tell a different story. All of them also combine surprising colors to help contextualize their function.
We stop at the design of the Games Room, an open playful space for which we were commissioned a very special mountain of colorful puffs, as you can see in the images. This colorful ‘tetris’ of comfortable and resistant poufs rises and mimics a series of colorful clues that seek to visually and spatially stimulate the little ones. It is a very versatile space, oriented to promote play and physical exercise, but also imagination and fantasy as you climb the colorful summit.
We had already collaborated in different children’s leisure projects, such as Kids&Big, La casa dels Xuklis or Kangura Portabebés, and sports projects, such as the Let Padel Ames club, in which we provided a different chill out & lounge touch in the decoration with
custom-made furniture.
. This work combines both ideas in the same space and design: sport and childhood. A new concept appears with bright colors, unusual shapes and unique features to develop children’s potential.
We agree with the words of Estudio AMATAM when it points out that the most gratifying aspect of this project is yet to come: “the moment when the little ones make this space their own, when this dream world created by adults fits into a child’s imagination”.
Receive news and offers
