Adventures in Architecture for Kids: 30+ Design Projects for Steam Discovery and Learning

Design Genius Jr.: Adventures in Architecture for Kids introduces kids to the design challenges faced by architects today, including choosing materials, designing for diverse users, and considering the environment.

Offering a world of possibilities for learning math, engineering, history, social studies, planning, geography, art, and design, this rich educational resource includes hands-on projects that allow kids to experiment, design, build, succeed, fail, and try again.

Children will draw upon many fields of knowledge and sharpen a variety of skills, including observation and communication, as they:
 

• Complete building challenges with corrugated cardboard and geodesic forms.
• Look at how designers have solved impossible problems of gravity and space with creations such as suspension bridges, the Loretto helix staircase, and Brunelleschi’s dome.
• Explore how materials can be used in interesting ways—how paper can go from flimsy to structural, for instance.
• Participate in family game playing: client and design team—finding creative ways to meet a client’s wish list. Use games to test strength, balance, and structure.
• Engage in pure imaginative archi-doodling.
• Explain the why. Why did styles evolve as they did? What technology was available when?

Design thinking—creative problem solving—will be crucial to resolving the global challenges in business, politics, and the environment facing the next generation. Each book in the Design Genius Jr. series teaches kids this important skill through fun, hands-on projects in a single area of design that challenge them to identify problems, explore possibilities, test ideas, and then come up with original solutions.

Vicky Chan founded Avoid Obvious Architects in 2012 with offices in New York and Hong Kong. The firm has been pushing sustainable buildings and cities with a focus on combining art with green technology. His projects have won 38 international awards and have been exhibited in 37 cities. Vicky's projects include master planning for the World Trade Center in New York, Des Vouex Road Central pedestrianization in Hong Kong, and various smart cities design in Canada, China, and India. Vicky founded a volunteer organization that has taught over 6,000 children about sustainable design and architecture. He believes our future will be brighter if children are more equipped with creative and sustainable thinking. He is serving the AIA Hong Kong Chapter as president.