- The physical design of early childhood institutions is essential to guarantee safety, accessibility, and functionality.
- Measuring the real impact of centers requires specific strategies focused on the quality of interactions between adults and children.
- Designing with efficiency, environmental adaptation, and risk management criteria is key to sustaining the operation and quality of centers.
A kindergarten or child development center is not just a physical space: it is the environment where children play, learn, connect, have fun, and rest. While adequate infrastructure is fundamental to guaranteeing their well-being, it alone does not ensure positive outcomes in child development.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) supports countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in the design, financing, and improvement of these spaces, promoting approaches that combine quality infrastructure with adequate standards and a people-centered perspective.
For these spaces to truly enhance education and care, infrastructure must be paired with strategies that improve staff working conditions and strengthen the quality of interactions between caregivers or teachers and children. It is also key to incorporate sustainability and resilience approaches that allow these centers to function over time. In this blog article, we summarize what to consider when designing spaces for early childhood.
An institution dedicated to early childhood must guarantee:
- Safety and Health
The space must have adequate natural and mechanical ventilation, lighting, non-toxic materials, moisture control, hygiene areas, and age-appropriate bathrooms. - Accessibility and Inclusion
Circulation routes must be accessible, with ramps, doors, and adapted furniture to guarantee early care for children with disabilities. - Stimulating and Functional Environments
It is important for classrooms to incorporate differentiated areas for symbolic play, sensory exploration, and rest. Furniture must be appropriate for children's size, with storage spaces and safe outdoor areas. - Flexibility and Modularity
Designs must be able to adapt spaces according to age, groups, and community use. - Regulatory Compliance
It is essential to respect occupancy limits, minimum surface area per child, and local construction requirements.
Once these space requirements are met, it is necessary to move toward process quality.
Service quality depends primarily on the interactions children have with the adults in charge. Therefore, to improve processes, early childhood education and care projects must integrate various aspects, such as:
- Offering ongoing training and in-classroom pedagogical support for caregivers and teachers.
- Implementing supervision focused on feedback and the evaluation of practices.
- Encouraging child observation, proximity, flexible groupings, and a balance between guided activities and free play.
- Ensuring time for planning and teamwork among teachers.
Design must incorporate a vision of sustainability and resilience that covers the entire infrastructure lifecycle, including:
- Environment-adapted design, integrating energy efficiency solutions (LED lighting, efficient equipment), renewable energy systems, and efficient water and waste management.
- Resilient design against localized risks, involving safe siting and a structure that minimizes vulnerabilities, along with contingency plans.
- Outdoor spaces and green areas with shade for open-air activities, which — especially in extremely hot or warm temperatures — contribute to shading the building and improving interior thermal regulation.
- Durable, low-maintenance materials, available in the local market for repairs or replacements as needed.
- Operation and maintenance manuals, with a budget planned from the planning stage, to ensure the long-term sustainability of the centers.
IDB initiatives have supported both the construction and renovation of centers, highlighting the importance of combining physical investment with quality policies.
- In Argentina, two loans supported the construction or renovation of 220 early childhood spaces and 111 preschool facilities for four- and five-year-olds. In addition, an assessment of the quality of learning environments in kindergartens was conducted.
- In Brazil, the construction of 77 Más Infancia Centers in the state of Ceará is planned.
- In Ecuador, 45 child development centers (CDIs) are currently being renovated.
- In Panama, five new Comprehensive Early Childhood Care Centers (CAIPIs) will be built, in addition to the renovation of 44 others.
- In the Dominican Republic, the construction of six CAIPIs is being financed.
The experiences promoted by the IDB in the region offer concrete lessons showing that planning early childhood centers goes beyond building infrastructure. It is about creating centers that are safe, sustainable, and resilient — centers that foster quality interactions and strengthen child development from the very first years.
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Livia Minoja (INE/INE), Romina Tomé (SCL/SPL), Adriana Viteri (SCL/EDU), and Andrea Bergamaschi (EDU/CUR) collaborated in the drafting of this publication.
