By Linda Cocchiola

andra Edwards clearly remembers a day when she was four-years old, patiently waiting for a doctor to stitch a gash on her head. While she instinctively knew not to touch the wound, the nurse assisting the doctor forcefully held down the little girl’s hands. “I never forgot that feeling of being underestimated,” says Edwards, a Southern alumna who is now a mother herself.

Edwards’ memory of that day continues to motivate her life’s work and passion: to create spaces that give voice to children. “I am always struck by how few people use the word ‘respect’ when they talk about children,” says Edwards. “To me, that’s the bottom line.”

Edwards, who holds degrees in early childhood education and psychology from Southern, is the chief executive officer, president, and design director of CHILDESIGN, The National Center on Design for Children. CHILDESIGN is a nonprofit organization conceived to raise “public awareness about every child’s basic right to a safe, nurturing, respectful, and responsive environment.”

Since founding CHILDESIGN in 1984, Edwards has pursued the organization’s mission through writing for national publications, demonstration projects, exhibitions, lectures, product design, and the Web. Among the organization’s most pressing goals is to create the nation’s first museum on design for children. Though envisioned for the New York City waterfront, Edwards sees the museum as a potential asset to many cities.

The birth and nurturing of CHILDESIGN reflects the intersection of multiple passions — Edwards’ deep admiration for children, her knowledge of child development and architecture, her artistic talents and, above all, her determination to change the way people think of children and their spaces.

“I have been a natural child advocate my whole life,” she says. “To some extent I also think I’ve been a designer my whole life. As a child, I would draw make-believe families, but I would also draw floor plans of their houses.” Richard Taber, a former Southern professor, notes that Edwards demonstrated her talents for child-focused design early on. When Edwards was a junior, she helped Taber and his wife start a summer camp for children in Bethany. “Sandra is very creative and innovative,” says Taber, “especially in the effort to create an enriched atmosphere for children, even if the setting is limiting.

”Edwards’ admiration for children developed early. The youngest of five siblings, she grew up in Connecticut and the Midwest. At age 8, she and her sister ran a neighborhood summer camp for younger children. “We charged something like 10 cents an hour,” she recalls. At age 12, she dedicated every Sunday for a year as the only child volunteer on a five-person therapy team, which worked with a 12-year-old brain-damaged child.

Once she arrived at Southern, majoring in early childhood education seemed natural for Edwards. Following graduation, she was a consultant, director, and teacher for several cutting-edge early childhood centers, including the State Street Center in New Haven and the Calvin Hill Childcare Center at Yale University.

One of her earliest child design experiences came at Calvin Hill, where the staff was struggling to help a child with problem behaviors. The child frequently lost control and had difficulty regaining his composure. Surveying the bright and cheery environment of the old firehouse where the center was based, Edwards had an epiphany. “There was nothing about this space that even suggested ‘contemplative,’” she says.

Noting that the boy had no private place to go to regain his composure, Edwards set out to create one. Using fabric and lumber from the basement, she built a quiet place where the child could calm himself. “I started designing and building before it occurred to me I wasn’t supposed to know how,” she says.

Discussing the quiet space with the center’s staff was enlightening. “The discussion helped me see how unfamiliar the teachers were with seeing space as a teaching tool,” she says. “To me, it came naturally to use space as I would a book.” Often, Edwards says, teachers and designers don’t understand how space and space-related dynamics, such as traffic flow, affect children. Many educators define learning environments in the numbers of books, chairs, and tables available to children — without considering the setting itself. “Space and setting literally have a constant impact on the life that takes place inside a structure,” she says.

In addition to her work in New Haven, Edwards also helped shape early childcare and education in Fairfield County. She was executive director of the Westport Infant-Toddler Center, Children’s Community serving children six weeks to five years, and co-founder of The Parent Child Center, a nationwide model for comprehensive childcare and family support.

Along the way, Edwards also studied architecture. “I did very much consider pursuing an architecture degree, but decided against it,” Edwards says. Instead, she learned by working closely with experts in the field. “It was a good decision,” she says. “It enabled me to develop my theory of children’s environmental needs independently, based on my work and observations of children and the adults who work with them.”

Unlike their counterparts in Europe, American manufacturers and designers were slow to tap into the Baby Boomer-led market for child-centered products and architecture. As a result, Edwards said it was difficult early on to secure funding for CHILDESIGN. “I am proud of having founded CHILDESIGN long before it was chic to do so,” she says triumphantly, acknowledging the organization’s challenging start-up.

When the opportunity to write about her ideas presented itself, Edwards jumped on it, while the American child design marketplace slowly gained momentum. “It proved a very successful strategy — a gift that fell in my lap,” she says.

Edwards wrote two books. “The second, ‘Product Design 2,’ put me in touch with the leading talents in the design world at the time,” she says. Other opportunities followed, including a keynote address at a major architecture and design conference, articles in design publications, and design exhibitions. Edwards served as contributing editor at ID Magazine, a manager/moderator/editor at the ID Design Review, and a founding writer for Elle Décor, before being appointed design editor for Parenting magazine. She served at Parenting from 1993-1997, with articles on study spaces, nurturing nurseries, safe childcare centers, and more. Her ideas also appeared in numerous other leading publications, among them The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, HOME, Working Mother, Spanish Vogue, and Metropolitan Home.

Edwards’ CHILDESIGN “Design Demonstration Projects” were the subject of numerous features, as well. (Edwards notes that a demonstration recently received a cover story commitment from the Long Island edition of Newsday.) The demonstrations address design challenges faced by many families, from creating spaces for privacy and contemplation to crafting shared spaces for siblings. In each case, Edwards’ solutions and innovations as the lead architectural designer are implemented through partnerships with union laborers, manufacturers who donate products, and other building professionals, such as surveyors and engineers who sign off on any major structural renovations. The goal: to provide an example for those who want to adopt child friendly designs into their own homes and spaces. (Photographs and explanations of several CHILDESIGN demonstrations, including a project focused on earth-friendly design, are on the CHILDESIGN Web site at www.childesign.org.)

Edwards’ CHILDESIGN consultations also include several institutional projects in child care centers and hospitals, including a design prototype for community hospitals to safeguard and make the delivery of pediatric care affordable. In the early 1990s, Edwards also was one of three people on a team developing plans for a children’s tour and theater area inside the United Nations (U.N.).

Edwards notes the project fell by the wayside when an international crisis forced the U.N. to focus on other priorities, but not before the Secretary General had given the presented model an enthusiastic reception. “It was a terrific experience that expanded my world views,” she says.

As communities and neighborhoods rebuild in the aftermath of 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina, Edwards would like architects, designers, and planners to pay greater attention to children. She hopes to influence their work through ongoing demonstrations, lectures, and the CHILDESIGN Web site.

She also hopes to fulfill her ultimate CHILDESIGN dream — to create the nation’s first museum on children and their spaces. Her goal is to secure a location and additional support for the National Center on Design for Children in the near future. “Show and tell is the crux of our work,” she says. “We cannot do the tell without the show.”