Ruth Asawa, whose commitment to art education and the improvement of the school curriculum, has clearly influenced my work, was a Japanese American art and education activist devoting many years of her life to create and consolidate an intertwined relationship between artists and primary schools through her successful Alvarado Art Workshop in San Francisco. Asawa, who studied at the Black Mountain College, knew that artists are key figures for schools and I firmly believe that architects, more specifically female architects, should go to schools too. WHY? Because after many years, more than twelve, practising architecture in my own office, I realized that a real dialogue towards better design of cities, can´t happen if the counterpart has no knowledge about the main points of the conversation. In my view, it is our duty as architects to offer knowledge about architecture and cities, to establish bridges of profound communication with society and to make visible and tangible our role as women in architecture.
Little Architect is an educational program introducing school children to the topic of architecture. We are part of the Architectural Association Visiting School and have been offering our lessons in London primary schools since 2013. The goal of our work is to educate school children, aged four to eleven, in the observation, understanding and questioning of their own built environment. Our aim is to create a proactive and committed relationship between citizens and the city. I will show how Little Architect uses architecture as a tool to transform and enrich children´s understanding of their habitat. The chosen context for these lessons, state schools, offers a wide and diverse spectrum of children, enabling the programme to bring new role models into the classroom, unmasking a male based curriculum, while fostering a creative way of thinking. Little Architect teaches children to think about architecture, not to make architecture, to empower children in having firm attitudes towards a local and global sustainable development, very much in line with the Unesco objectives for 2030.
Little Architect, was originally sketched out by Mark Cousins in 2011, but the strict rules of children safety made it impossible to be developed. In 2010, I came to live in London and after spending a couple of years researching and testing a methodology to incorporate architecture in the UK school curriculum, I offered my experiences to the AA. Natasha Sandmeier in the first instance, but primarily Christopher Pierce´s, director of the AA Visiting School, rapidly saw the educational strengths of this project and gave the green light to the programme which has so far reached nearly 5,000 children.
The beginning of the negative female stereotypes starts as far as Pandora and Eva, which means a quasi-eternal “guilty” portrait of women. After generations of women fighting for equality we still find behaviors, songs´ lyrics, adverts, movies or music videos, giving us a distorted image of women, shaping and perpetuating the “white male hero”, so when we, female architects, visit the primary school classroom we are not just teaching about architecture and the city, we are making various feminist statements.
Learning is never an isolated process, it is contextual. Learning happens everywhere, through formal and informal education. In both types of education, we find the official, the hidden and the null curriculum.[1] The official curriculum in the UK is the one that Little Architect has carefully studied to incorporate architecture in the statutory learning hours but what we are doing from inside the education system is an attack to the hidden and the null curriculum. We do our approach from three angles: 1.Taken down stereotypes about contemporary architecture and modernity 2. Incorporating a positive, powerful and active female role into the children´s imagery 3. Re-training[2] the senses in order to grow children´s capabilities to observe and being curious, hence their critical thinking.
Maria Acaso, Spanish writer, art activist and professor, maintains that any act of teaching is a performance[3], we share her idea and we have designed the scrip like this:
We go to teach to schools. In GOING, in moving ourselves towards children rather than expecting them to come to our place, we have made one of our fundamentals. We are setting horizontal relationships and generating in the children an unconscious feeling of self-steam. We are erasing hierarchies. Architect = Primary School teacher. We, female architects, become part of their daily environment thus we become familiar and trustful. Bruno Munari´[1]s called for demolishing the myth of the “star” artist, in our case we are demolishing the “star” architect.
At early ages children, usually don´t know the meaning of the word architecture and generally they confuse our discipline with archaeologists or builders. Showing that we, female architects, have: Designed architecture, controlled a building process, know about materials and construction systems, know about maths and structures, have convinced clients and politicians and ultimately make people lives´ happier: we are offering a brand-new female role model, strongly linked to concepts such as power, knowledge and care. We highlight the role of female architects bringing examples of their work and introducing a narrative to communicate their ideas to children: Alison Brooks, Sarah Wigglesworth, Benedetta Tagliabue, Anna Heringer, Marta Parra& Angela Muller or Zaha Hadid, Lina Bobardi, Gego…etc,
- A) Zaha: the super clever woman who lifted a building to run for longer.
- B) Benedetta: The caring architect that designed a new landscape for the neighbours. Architecture for the people.[2] “Rebuilding London” Mayor of London. The connectivity and the seeking for new audiences. 700 schools and school teachers.
- C) Dolores Victoria Ruiz (Little Architect figure in the class) Tangible, approachable, reachable
Neil Postman´s wrote a poetic definition of children “Children, are the living messages that we send to a time we will not see”[3]but it creates a gap too open between adults and children. We like to celebrate the creation of a team and to work for a better future together: Children and Adults. Social empowerment needs to come together with teaching the tools to reach the ones in power. Some examples of our lessons fostering this empowerment are: Sending postcards to Boris Jonhson(Ex London mayor) sending proposals to improve the Caledonian Clock Tower to the Islington council or improvements in The Royal Dockyard in Chatham to the Heritage Lottery Fund. In less than 15 or 20 years these children will be in charge of London acting like doctors, school teachers, taxi drivers, architects, shop keepers, or maybe politicians and we, female architects, are empowering them to claim for better cities.
“Welcome to the AA, the greatest school of architecture on the planet!” In words of Brett Stelee, there is no other place like The AA, but regardless if his words were accurate or not, the AA is today an influencer, it is a reference in the architecture realm and as Marshall McLuhan stated: The medium is the message, and the message consist of an independent self-funded architectural school teaching architecture in deprived areas of London, this is the most significant aspect here, it is its replica capability, the legacy that it might leave in the educative sector and the position that we, female architects, will address as time passes.
Thank you very much. Dolores Victoria Ruiz Garrido founder and director of Little Architect AA Visiting School.
[1] Jackson, Life in Classrooms, 1968 ( p. 33-34)
[2] Re-training refers to older children attending the last courses in Key Stage Two ( Year 5 and 6) that learnt about their own senses in Nursery and Reception but due to the current use of mobile devices have been
[1] Bruno Munari, Design as Art. 1966
[2] Yona Friedman, Architecture with the people, by the people, for the people. MUSAC. 2011
[3] Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood. 1982
[1] Jackson, Life in Classrooms, 1968 ( p. 33-34)
[2] Re-training refers to older children attending the last courses in Key Stage Two ( Year 5 and 6) that learnt about their own senses in Nursery and Reception but due to the current use of mobile devices have been
[3] Maria Acaso, Pedagogias Invisibles, 2013