Children try their hands at architecture

http://thechronicleherald.ca/community/halifax/1154645-children-try-their-hands-at-architecture

Ezra Eastwood, eight, shows off what his dream house looks like so far. He said he hopes the program comes back next year. (Colin Chisholm)

Ethan Eastwood, who is 10 worked on miniature furniture for the inside.

“It has lots of stuff that I want, like the upstairs I want it to be open concept and then recreation downstairs,” Eastwood said. “That’s the way I would like my house to be when I grow up.”

“I’m putting some stuff on the walls and floor to make it look cool,” he said. “I came up with the ideas with my own mind. It’s really fun; I hope I can do this next year. I like building and designing. It’s fun to build what you want.”

It’s something we all fantasize about, our dream home. How many rooms, the design, where it’s located. But does your ideal home say something about you and your culture?

That’s something Matthew Ritchie, youth public programs coordinator at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 is hoping to find out while a group of children design and build models of their ideal abodes.

“This is called ‘build it,’ and it’s connected with our current temporary exhibit, Migrating Landscapes,” Ritchie said while children put their models together.

The Migrating Landscapes exhibit, which we’ve covered in a previous article, explores the theme of immigration through architecture and design.

Build it, which took place on August 21, explores that theme in a tangible way, by getting the participants to build their own structure.

“Now they’re able to try to build essentially their dream house, with some of the themes from the exhibit running through their mind,” he said. “They’ve heard from the architects downstairs and now they are giving a try themselves.”

The children draw models of their homes on paper and then, just like architects, build small models of what it could look like.

The day will also included a visit to the Migrating Landscapes exhibition and a presentation from guest speaker Vincent Van Den Brink, Architect and Partner at Breakhouse in Halifax.

“We have 30 youth participating from all across the HRM, it’s an opportunity for them to meet other young people that are from other communities,” he said.

“I’m hoping that after today, these youth will see their own community in a new light,” he said. “When they look at the Hydrostone market for instance, they’ll look at the architecture and understand where it came from. I do see from the questions they’re asking today, that they’re already beginning to process that information.”

The models are constructed with cardstock, scrapbooking material, model trees and miniature people often found in architectural renderings.

Josh Priest, nine, said it was fun to design his own home.

“It’s just a giant house pretty much,” Priest said. “It’s not made out of brick, it’s supposed to look like it was made out of wood. It doesn’t waste as much, building it with wood instead of things like brick.”

Priest pasted images of woodpiles on the exterior, giving it a log cabin look. Priest works with other children at his table, where they discuss their designs.

“I like everything about it,” he said. “We were talking about whether I should add a second floor or cut through the middle, so we’ll see.”

About the Author

COLIN CHISHOLM
Herald Community Writer
colin.andrew.chisholm@gmail.com