In 2015, CONAF-Chile and EAHR teamed up to carry out this pioneering and unique project. This project aimed to build a child’s dream of living in a tree, seeing the sea or looking from a mountain. Everyone has the right to experience beautiful places, enjoy magnificent views, and appreciate nature.
This pilot design opens an emotional, psychological, and pedagogical issue. It explores how children with disabilities experience and exist within nature. Dreams, fantasy, imagination are a growth engine, they are inherent in childhood, and can be transformed into an unforgettable experience. Human beings are explorers and discoverers by essence, children are by their very nature the first conquerors of new spaces of imagination.
The three natural parks chosen for this project are all within close range of major cities. Everyone can enjoy this project and feel the excitement of children in nature. Building a project for children with different abilities and reduced mobility, extends the range of the architectural experience in nature to all those who accompany them; families, friends, teachers, schoolmates and all citizens curious about new personal experiences.
Global accessibility standards worldwide have focused on cities and buildings to ensure equal access, regardless of user mobility. Yet, we have not developed the same equality of opportunities for access to nature. That is why the right of children with disabilities takes on a greater meaning in nature.
Architecture, of the highest aesthetic quality and ethical level, becomes a tool for achieving social inclusion. The beauty of nature and the beauty of architecture must be everyone’s heritage.
