Children as Place-Makers

Book excerpt: Each of these Analysing Architecture Notebooks is devoted to a particular theme in understanding the rich and varied workings of architecture. They can be thought of as addenda to the foundation volume Analysing Architecture, which first appeared in 1997 and has subsequently been enlarged in three further editions. Examining these extra themes as a series of Notebooks, rather than as additional chapters in future editions, allows greater space for more detailed exploration of a wider variety of examples, whilst avoiding the risk of the original book becoming unwieldy. As children we make places spontaneously: on the beach, in woodland, around our homes... Those places are evidence of a natural language of architecture we all share. Beginning with the child as seed and agent of the places it makes, initial sections of Children as Place-makers illustrate the key ‘verbs’ that drive that natural language of architecture. Later sections look at the core importance of the circle of place, how as children we are drawn to inhabit boxes, and the narrative possibilities that arise when place is linked with imagination. The principal messages of this Notebook are that it is by place-making we make sense of the space of the world in which we live, and that the first step in becoming a professional architect is to re-awaken the innate architect inside each of us.