Architecture and Children: Integrated Design Education Using the Designed and Built

This guidebook presents an educational framework for studying and understanding essential architectural concepts, including the physics that govern the principles of structure, design in nature, and similarities found in built and fabricated structural systems. This is a curriculum for teaching and learning about the design process, the process of learning through visual thinking, use of hypotheses, problem-solving, analysis, idea generation and communication through drawing and model making. This curriculum is a guide for teachers and students to discover the many roles design plays in our lives and environments. It provides a means for developing a better understanding of the world and how to refine ideas and approaches to solve problems creatively. The program has built-in equity because the ideas expressed in drawing, model building, and other visual means, can come from all students no matter who they are or their origins.