At PS11, Architecture Day is a Saturday reserved for a workshop in which kids, ages 9-12, get an early exposure to architecture. I first became aware of the project through Kimberly Murphy, an architect and proud parent of two PS11’ers. Architecture Day is one of those activities where volunteers seem to get just as much out of it as the children enrolled in the school.
The day began with a simple kick-off activity that I developed for everyone to warm up with. We handed out plotted measuring tapes and a packet of questions that were written to be fun, open-ended, and would promote collaboration. We also introduced the project, redesigning the PS11 playground. To help illustrate, volunteers tapped out a large scale site on the floor and shared 11 x 17 floor plans to sketch on.
During the course of the day, I felt I had a lot in common with my third, fourth, and fifth-grade “studio mates”. In hindsight, we (the volunteers) were doing design and the kids were essentially our clients. All students had ideas for what they wanted in their projects, but not necessarily the skills to put it all together. As architects, it was our job to tease out the concepts within, and synthesize ideas into a piece that the kids could see and ultimately hold.
A great example of this was when the kids in our group wanted to build an outdoor stage. My partner, Lindsay, and I suggested that it might rain, or that the sun could be too bright. With that, the kids began working on a stage canopy. Fortunately, another group had already been working on building umbrellas and was able to contribute their expertise. The “umbrella group,” which was now aware of the issues the stage group was working on, shared their ideas with the “hammock group.” Soon, a special type of hammock stand was developed with an integrated umbrella.
Another one of the challenges we faced along the way, was finding the right balance between developing a student’s new ideas and contributing to existing projects. On the one hand, you want to find a way to make every single student’s idea come to life, but on the other, this is just not possible––not to mention that you will quickly run out of space and energy. It actually benefits everyone if volunteers do their best to absorb ideas, and encourage students to work together in groups. It results in a much more organic collaboration of ideas and less micromanaging on the volunteers’ part, which of course means more time for them to focus on leading the group.
A lot of what I’m talking about here easily translates to how grown-ups act or should act within a creative environment. It also fleshes out a lot of what I think it means to organize a project. What I think is important about this example is that it deals with kids for two particular reasons: Not only is it important to foster this learning approach early on, but it could prove valuable to continue approaching adults with the same clarity and simplicity. If you can master this process with kids, who operate at the simplest level of creativity, I think you can lay the right foundation for working creatively with peers.
More information about Architecture Day is available via the ESKW/A Blog, or on the sidebar. Also check out videos with our collaborator, NYCOBA.
Frank Ball 