WHY ARCHITECTURE?

Architecture is about the built environment and our experiences with the environment. While the built environment is all around us and we experience it everyday, architecture is like a language that has to be learnt and we learn about it with all our senses. Pallasmaa, in his article "An Architecture of the Seven Senses" described that the architectural experiences should be "measured
 equally 
by
 the
 eye, 
ear,
 nose,
 skin,
 tongue, 
skeleton 
and 
muscle” (Pallasmaa, 2005).

Architecture, is considered by many, as an art. But the art of building, in reality, involves multiple fields correlated to one another from math to physics, geography to history, arts to social disciplines, just to name a few. 


Hence, by teaching children architecture, we are also teaching them to be more sensitive to our environment via a integrated multidimensional approach of learning.

Further, Play has been recognised by many early childhood theorists such as Vygotsky and Piaget to be beneficial to children's cognitive development as well as other forms of development.

As children, they are naturally curious about their environment and participate in play more naturally than adults.

The most important thing about an architectural education is that it embraces that natural curiosity of young children and provide an environment for purposeful play by allowing children to "learn by doing" as they build on their past experiences and knowledge to construct new learning in each project work.

Herman Foster puts it best,
"As an architect, you design for the present with an awareness for the past for a future which is essentially unknown."

Aren't everyone architects of our own future and children are the first to begin so?

References

Steven,
 H. , Pallasmaa
, J. and
 Pérez‐Gómez, A (1994).
 Questions
 of
 Perception,
 Phenomenology 
of
Architecture.

 Architecture
 and 
Urbanism.