CERG has consulted on many design projects with children in mind,  ranging from urban design, landscape architecture, architecture and product design for children’s safety. The perspective we bring to the design process includes our understanding of how children explore, play and use different kinds of settings. It also includes recognition of the values of involving children, and those who regularly care for them in the design process.

Sometimes we are invited to develop the first phase of a design project: a detailed design program for the architects on what different uses and experiences the new design needs to accommodate (such as the Hasbro Children’s hospital in Rhode Island). At other times we are brought in to evaluate a setting after it has been designed and built.  In the best of circumstances we are asked to collaborate with the design firm in all phases of design from program development through on-going commentary and critique at all phases of design to the final post-occupancy evaluation ( such as Selim Iltus’s role in a NYC juvenile detention project). We have worked in parks, playgrounds, childcare settings, schools, children’s hospitals, family housing, children’s museums , botanic gardens and zoos (such as the Richmond Botanic Garden children’s area, the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Children’s Discovery Garden, and the Rockwell Imagination Playground).