Intelligent study spaces for
your child
| Often in an apartment or a house, a separate study for your child may
be a luxury. G. MAHADEVAN explores some viable alternatives. |
HANDY EXTENSION: Open kitchens have made their appearances in many houses.
A spacious, book-filled, quiet study room; an intellectual
refuge from the din of daily life - which parent does not dream of gifting such
a creative space to his child? But then the reality is that not many families
are able to afford a room exclusively for the purposes of study.
In many a home these days, the dining table or even the
bedside table doubles up as the children's `study.' However, at a time when the
television has made a transition from a living room showpiece to dining room
companion, the book and the idiot box often compete - in a one-sided match - for
the attention of children. This is particularly true of apartments where there
may be just a teepoy to mark the Line of Control between the dining and living
rooms.
The dining table, as many a child has discovered over the
years, is most often not the best of places to try and digest trigonometry or
put the finishing touches to that biology project. Apart from the distraction
called TV there is always the danger of guests/neighbours dropping by for a nice
evening out (for them). The semi-colons and colons called meals/tea/snacks make
continuous study a bumpy proposition. So what is the way out?
Changing
concept
According to Sajan, executive director of COSTFORD, the
concept of a study inside the bedroom has started catching the fancy of many a
family. "All it takes is a six feet by six feet cubicle sort of thing to
become a study. Such a study can be easily incorporated into the design of a
house being built and can also be fashioned out of an existing bedroom. It may
not be a place to lounge on an armchair but such a cubicle will do as a study
area that spots a table and has space for books," he says. In apartment
complexes where bedrooms are often the quietest spots such a `study' may just
turn out to be what the doctor ordered.
Any apartment worth its big budget sports at least one good
balcony. Often this space is used to dry clothes or at worst as an attic of
sorts. Why not, asks Mr. Sajan, convert your balcony into a study? Of course the
one that faces the main road may not be the ideal choice. A small table and a
shelf and perhaps a bamboo curtain for that dash of privacy and hey presto you
have a study; that too one that allows for plenty of fresh air and, for all you
know, fresh attitudes to learning.
Alternatives
Ever thought staircases as the starting point of a good
study? No? Consider this. The slab of the ground floor's roof is often
terminated where the stairs angle up to the first floor. But then at that point
if the slab is given a lift of say, three feet or so the result is a `table' on
the first floor. The starting point, if you will, of a study.
Now for those mothers who rush from the kitchen to the
`study' called the dining table and back again - many a time - so that the food
on the stove does not burn and the child doing his Math gets his multiplication
right, why not take the study into the kitchen itself?
Again, nothing elaborate but just a handy extension of the
kitchen slab. Such `open kitchens' have made their appearances in many houses.
And yes, this multipurpose space is immune to the promptings of the TV or to the
laughter of the untimely guest.
Courtesy: Property Plus, The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/pp/2007/03/10/stories/2007031000880100.htm
