in collaboration with The Learning Department, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Supported by The Danish Arts Council.
The project was presented in november 2019 at the Arkii conference on architecture education for children and youth in Helsinki were we invited to speak and host a workshop.
The aim of the project is to give children and young people an awareness of architecture as more than singular buildings. We focus on architecture as a collaborative practice and introduce the architect as someone who must always negotiate many different factors when proposing a project. We want to show the children that building the world is about listening to others, respecting the context and being creative in finding the best possible solutions – between the rules and many layers of history that already exist and the hopes and needs of the future.
With the architecture of Louisiana Museum as a case, we examine the relationship between body, landscape and architecture. The workshop week is formed as a five-part relay – where a series of ‘obstructions’ give the children a hands-on experience of the complex and exciting field architects navigate within. In pairs, the children use their own bodies to produce large wild drawings that they turn into landscapes. Part of the drawn landscape is then transformed to 3D building sites. We give each site its own ‘local plan’ with specific restrictions. Negotiations with the local council (us) are part of the creative process. Final ‘obstruction’ is to collaborate on connecting all the sites to one large city structure in a scenario 30 years in the future. The children then present their sites in a text telling about the experiences and challenges that are part of the sites in a future with climate changes and new living conditions.
Using Louisiana as case gives us the opportunity to introduce the importance of materiality, light and the interplay between building and context. The theme of time is also exemplified by the way Louisiana is built in many stages as an additive system. Along the way, the children are introduced to tools of architectural production, to important factors such as scale, time and the planning system in a playful manner.
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