The home as a playfull stage: with household objects subverted. Play as creative and experimental activity in an every day enviroment

Abstract

Considering the domestic space as the first field of play allows the child to enter the experience of everyday life as the basis of learning. Playing at home uses daily objects, and space and time overturn their functions, uses and original meanings. The topography is altered by a skyline near to the ground, which allow the discovery of new places, where objects and furniture appear as obstacles and opportunities to colonize. Creativity, linked to animal survival instinct, stimulates the search for spaces to hide. Hiding behind, under and within certain household objects, becomes a creative action that gives new features and offers a free interpretation of everyday items such as wardrobes, beds and tables. Inside the house a child can find new structures to hide built with household goods. The concept of the house as family accommodation full of secrets, objects and spaces, has now evolved into a transparent space in which homelife expands beyond the house, now inhabited by groups not necessarily linked by family ties, and where virtual reality quickly replaces the analogue. Is it possible to play in this new domestic space?