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Children as Architects
February 28, 2014
Family is the first school for young children, and parents are powerful models.
-Alice Sterling Honig
-Alice Sterling Honig
"The child-and-adult-designed community of Coriandoline was conceptually born in 1990, when a construction co-op in the northern Italian town of Correggio made the radical decision to be for abianti (inhabitants) rather than for abitazioni (habitations)," reports Landscape Architecture (June 2009).
"Shifting to this philosophy meant getting input about housing development design from all members of the community — including children. Teachers collected ideas from 700 local kids, who spent time learning about architecture and drawing and building models. Their suggestions were published in 1999, in the Manifesto of Children's Living Needs. In 2006 the first residents turned their inspiration into brick and mortar and moved into Coriandoline, which now consists of 20 homes built around a central square.
"In describing their 'ideal' houses... the kids listed essential features ranging from 'transparent,' 'hard outside and soft inside,' to 'playful,' 'decorated,' and 'magical.' These insights clearly informed the neighborhood's final design. It's impossible to play around on Coriandoline's sprightly website and not crack a smile."
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Comments (1)
Displaying 1 CommentOMEP-USA
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
What a wonderful example of children participating in community decisions - a true opportunity for children to express their rights of participation, something from the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Congratulations to the people in Italy and to ExchangeEveryDay for relaying its important message. Another aspect of this EED is the role of children as architects - this is what Lucy Sprague Mitchell, founder of Bank Street College, NYC, meant when she said children need experiences (exploring buildings and their design and construction methods) and opportunities for expression (playing with unit blocks in a designated part of the classroom and for as long as they need to construct their project. Architects can be children's best friends: Norman Brosterman, an architect, wrote Inventing Kindergarten to show how Froebel's education beliefs influenced children's development. IK is to be republished this year after going out of print. Early childhood rules!
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