How to foster children to become the future architects

Hello everybody! Today is International Children's Day. Happy Children's Day to all the children as well as anyone who is not a child anymore! How should one foster children to become architects? The question itself is a fraud because who can accurately predict the future? Whether about architects’ future or children’s future, nobody can predict it accurately. Many well-known architects just happen to have become architects.

Yansong Ma had a movie dream and wanted to be a movie director. At his entry interview to his dream college (which is one of the best movie academies in China), he was suggested to study architecture instead, which he never thought about. Rem Koolhaas was a journalist who had a movie dream as well. He had written movie scripts. His father was a movie critic, and his son is working in Hollywood. But Koolhaas became an architect.

Good Memories are the Fountain of Good Design

Peter Zumthor, one of the Pritzker Prize Laureates, once said when he thinks about architecture, a lot of images come to his mind. Those are the fragmented memories from his childhood life. The following is his memory of a door handle:

“Sometimes I can almost feel a particular door handle in my hand, a piece of metal shaped like the back of a spoon. I used to take hold of it when I went into my aunt’s garden. That door handle still seems to me like a special sign of entry into a world of different moods and smells. I remember the sound of the gravel under my feet, and the soft gleam of the waxed oak staircase. I can hear the heavy front door closing behind me as I walk along the dark corridor and enter the kitchen, the only really brightly lit room in the house.”

After this text is just the memory of his aunt’s kitchen. The memories are filled with happiness. This is just an ordinary, traditional kitchen. Those memories are his architectural experience before he learned anything about “architecture”. Later when designing kitchens, he will incorporate the same feelings from his memories into his design.

When designing something new, our imagination is always based on our recognition of things that already exist.

Good memories are the fountain of good design and also the fountain of happiness for one’s entire life.

In the novel “Remembrance of Things Past”, Marco Proust had the following description of madeleines:

“She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had the effect, which love has, of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal.”

With just one bite of the small dessert, immediately one can feel life is worth living. This is actually because the madeleines made an internal connection with a past happiness that was associated with love and care. From then on, the madeleine has a new function as a happiness recall.

A good sense of aesthetics is fostered by a variety of experiences

There are a few things that can make one feel that life is worth living, such as having a satisfying meal or staring at a majestic scenery. I believe that being able to see the beauty in a work of architecture can also evoke this feeling. But what is “beauty”? Well, that is up to each individual’s sense of aesthetic.

Aesthetic sense is developed upon life experiences including education. The process is similar to big data learning. We are constantly collecting all kinds of samples as we grow old. If the quantity of samples is not large enough or the samples are similar to each other, then it will be difficult to differentiate between what is beautiful and what is ugly.

Let’s use food as an analog. If someone always eats the same kind of food during his childhood (similar samples), after he grows up, when he tries other kinds of food, he may narrow-mindedly judge the taste based on what he’s used to. On the contrary, if someone has tried all sorts of food and cuisines from different places (mixed samples), after he grows up he may have an open-minded attitude towards food he has never eaten before as well as a well-developed sense of taste.

When I.M. Pei was a young child, he used to play in the Suzhou Garden which happens to be his backyard. There, his grandpa would instruct the staff to rearrange the rocks in the garden to see which configuration would be more appealing. This was how I.M. Pei developed his first sense of beauty.

Work with your hands, work with your mind, anything is fine

When discussing how to foster children to become architects, the typical answer is taking a drawing class. I don’t think being able to draw well is necessary to become an architect. I know of an architect whose drawing skills are quite average. Even I.M. Pei’s drawing skills are quite ordinary. If the child enjoys drawing, then it’s good to send him to a drawing class. Just keep in mind if the class is instructed as a “step-by-step” approach to drawing, then avoid it. It will just kill the child’s creativity. It’s said that Ma Yansong once had this kind of drawing class and he gave up at the third class. If the child does not enjoy drawing, playing instruments, cooking, various kinds of crafting, or anything that involves working with their hands and their minds together is also a great way to foster their creativity.

Learning how to cook to similar to learning how to become an architect. You need to study the ingredients (analogous to architectural building materials) and understand their different characteristics. You need to learn how to create unique taste and textures, and yet it needs to look beautiful and appetizing. The learning process is full of fun and hard work, just like studying architecture.

Cultivating children’s abilities with their hands is vital. Playing with Legos can do the trick. Many architects enjoy playing with Legos.

Conclusion

No matter how hard the macroenvironment is, children’s happiness today is linked to their happiness in their future and the world they will create.