Abstract
The interest and expenditure for children is increasing than in the past because the number of nuclear family is growing, the children's space is configured independently in most homes from infancy, therefore, the market of children's furniture is expanding in spite of the reduction in the population of children. There are not many products considering age, gender, and play behavior in children's furniture market in Korea. The bed, desk, chair, and closet for children under 2 years hold a large majority of children's furniture, there are not a lot of preschool children's furniture for the children aged 4 to 7. As the children aged 4 to 7 experience physical, emotional, and cognitive growth at the same time, the space configuration and furniture choice for these children is educationally very important. Therefore, in this study, we present the importance and necessity of playable furniture to promote the physical, social, emotional, linguistic, and cognitive development of the children aged 4 to 7 among preschool children. We found the concept and basic condition of playable furniture to collect the base data for developing playable furniture and provided the basic data for the development of an ideal playable furniture by comparing and analyzing the cases of 157 items of 14 domestic playable furniture companies and 365 items of 30 overseas in aspect of play functions, forms, materials and colors.