The Secret Place
This pattern is shaped by
Problem
When every space a child inhabits — bedroom, classroom, playground — is designed by adults, supervised by adults, and legible to adults, children have no territory that belongs to them. They cannot retreat, cannot experiment, cannot be unknown. The child who is always observed never learns to observe herself.
Evidence and Discussion
Children require spaces that adults cannot easily see into. This is not about danger or misbehavior — it is about the developmental necessity of privacy, autonomy, and world-making. Roger Hart's 1979 study of children's geography in a Vermont town documented how children consistently sought out "secret places" — under porches, in hedges, behind sheds — spaces they could claim, modify, and defend. These were not incidental; they were among the most valued features of their environment. Hart found that children who had access to such spaces showed greater environmental competence and independence than those whose play was confined to supervised areas.
Alexander's original Pattern 203 (Child Caves) recognized this need: "Children love to be in small, cozy, cave-like spaces... partly enclosed, dark, with room for a few children only." But Alexander framed it primarily as a design feature — a built alcove or loft. What the evidence suggests is something wilder. The most valued secret places are not designed by architects; they are found or made by children themselves. The gap behind the garage. The hollow under the willow. The fort assembled from scrap lumber and old blankets. The spatial quality that matters is not cuteness but illegibility — the adult cannot immediately parse what is happening inside.
This has implications for how we design yards, gardens, and play spaces. A secret place cannot be manufactured, but it can be enabled. Dense plantings create pockets. A change in grade creates a hollow. A shed placed six feet from a fence creates a gap. Loose materials — boards, fabric, branches — allow children to build their own enclosures. The design move is not to build the secret place but to create the conditions from which secret places emerge. Simon Nicholson's "Theory of Loose Parts" (1971) is relevant here: the degree of inventiveness in any environment is directly proportional to the number of variables in it. A secret place is, by definition, a place the child has invented.
In Edmonton's climate, the secret place takes seasonal forms. In summer, it is the hollow in the caragana hedge, the space under the deck. In winter, the snow fort built where the plow piled the drift, the quinzhee hollowed out and lined with a tarp. The winter version is often superior — more private, more earned, more temporary. Parents should resist the urge to improve it.
Therefore
in every yard, garden, or play space intended for children, create at least one zone of visual illegibility — a place adults cannot easily see into from standing height. Use dense planting (shrubs at least 1.2 meters high), grade changes (a hollow or mound), or structures placed close together (a shed 1.5 meters from a fence). Provide loose materials — branches, boards, fabric, rope — that children can use to build their own enclosures. Do not design the secret place itself; design the gap from which it will emerge. Test by standing at full adult height at the edge of the play area: if you can see every square meter, you have failed.