The Girls’ Home: Developing Thoughts on Democracy By Graeme Bristol, MAIBC, MRAIC

Centre for Architecture & Human Rights

231/2 South Sathorn Road,

Yannawa, Sathorn,

Bangkok 10120

THAILAND

mobile phone (Bangkok): 089-1617283

glbristol@gmail.com

www.architecture-humanrights.org

1. INTRODUCTION

Seven-year-old Sai and her younger brother were brought to the Girls‟ Home by

concerned neighbours one evening. The neighbours found them alone in their place in

the Klong Toei slum. It seems that their parents had been arrested and taken to jail earlier

in the day for some drug offence and the children had no one else to turn to and

nowhere else to go. Familiar with Father Joe‟s1 work over the last 30 years in this port

area of Bangkok, the neighbours thought that he might take these two children in. There

were already about 35 girls, ranging in age from 4 to 18, living in this set of five converted

shophouses (see Figure 1) that had been turned into a home for girls who had no other.

The staff managed to find a bed for them up

on the second floor and the two children got

settled in that night. The next morning, though,

all the other children headed off to school but

no arrangements had yet been made for Sai

and her brother to get them into some local

primary school. For that day at least, they were

just going to have to stay there and explore

their new home.

It seems that one thing Sai noticed about this

new place is that everyone seemed so rich!

There were stuffed toys on all the beds.

Everyone seemed to have so much! What

place had she landed in? And how long before she would be taken out of here and off

to somewhere else? She had to take some control over this situation.

While the staff busied themselves with their morning chores, Sai busied herself with taking

some control over her future. About an hour later, sensing that unnatural quiet that

always tells parents that something is up, one of the staff located Sai outside the

entrance, having taken as many of the stuffed toys as she could carry down the stairs

and set up shop on the sidewalk to sell them.2

2. ENGLISH CLASS

It was a year later that I met Sai and the other girls over at the Soi 40 home, when I had

volunteered to teach English on Tuesday evenings. She had tempered her

entrepreneurial flair but she had lost none of her indefatigable spirit. She had to be in the

middle of everything that was going on.

However, going through the „See Spot run‟ variety of English was not nearly enough to

maintain her attention. I realized in short order that my background in architecture

prepared me in no way whatsoever for teaching the English language to Sai and the

other girls. It wasn‟t long before I resorted, as we all seem to, to those things which seem

Figure 1- the front of the Girls' Home.

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most familiar and comfortable. So, one evening I came in with a couple of boxes of

sharpened pencils and about 100 sheets of A4 paper. I said, „Draw a house!‟

Now, it‟s no secret that kids, before they are told they have no aptitude for it, love to

draw. For my own purposes, though, I was interested in two things:

Teaching some vocabulary by using their own drawings („What is that?‟ „A

window.‟) instead of ready-made drawings from some book; and,

Finding out what their image of a house would be.

Given their experience of „house‟ I was more than a little curious to see what they would

draw. Would they draw from some sort of ideal form or would they draw from

experience? Would they draw something that was culture-specific or would they draw

that generic pitched-roof box that is common in my own culture? What is held in the

mind‟s eye of a six-year old who has been removed from her home in the slum and

brought here to this new home to live? What does home mean? What does it look like?

What many of them drew was a house in the

country. A traditional Thai house (see Figure 2)

with a pond, rice fields, water buffalo, ducks and

chickens. This was not just a house but a scene,

an entire environment and it was certainly an

environment that had little to do with their

immediate conditions. What is the source of that

image of home? Was this wishful thinking? Well,

some of it, with Jack and Rose on the Titanic was

more in the nature of popular fantasy, so I may

have been reading too much into this image of

the country house. Still, those questions were

unavoidable, considering my own background in

architecture, the house they were in now and the

typical house that they came from in the Klong

Toei slum.

I thought of Le Corbusier‟s worker housing

prototype that he designed in Pessac in the mid-

twenties. The clean crisp „machine-for-living‟ with

flat roofs, expansive windows and no

ornamentation whatsoever. A

shining example of modernity. Fifty

years later they were revisited by

Philippe Boudon3 who recorded

what the new owners had done to

alter that crisp clean image.

Traditional pitched roofs were

erected, the expansive picture

windows were subdivided and

wooden shutters place on either side.

They replaced that spare (bare)

exterior with elements that signified

„home‟ to them (rather than to some

architect). And here, the kids were

using their traditional symbols in a

similar way.

There was little in their current home,

Figure 2 - the country home as imagined by

one student

Figure 3 - one of the two tables in the L-shaped dining room

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though, that I could identify as fulfilling that symbolic function. The exterior was a

nondescript grey colour. The entry was difficult to identify. It could have been any set of

shophouses, anywhere in the city. Now, of course, there are perfectly legitimate reasons

for not drawing any more attention to it than necessary, in an effort to blend into the

neighbourhood rather than clearly identify some institutional use. That said, though, there

was nothing on the exterior that could symbolize „home‟ for the children returning from

school.

Inside was no better. The front door, if it could be called that, entered directly into a

work area. From there one had to go down a dark hallway that served also as a storage

area. That hallway led to the core of the space. The living/play/dining/circulation area

(see Figure 3 above). To one side of this core area were offices facing the street, in front

was the storage/garage area, and to the other side was the kitchen. In other words,

there could be no natural light coming into this important space. It didn‟t help that the

walls were painted in that offensive institutional pale green colour. A colour that

reminded me of hospitals in the 50‟s. Grim.

I began to wonder just to what extent this place in the city was not home but only a way

station, temporary housing. Given the circumstances of their lives, there must always be

some sense that this housing is temporary. In this world of the temporary, I was reminded

of Robert Coles‟ description of the children of migrant farm workers in America in the

early 60‟s. He said,

“It is utterly part of our nature to want roots, to need roots, to struggle for roots,

for a sense of belonging, for some place that is recognized as mine, as yours,

as ours. (Coles, 1971:120)

It was in that life of constant movement from farm to farm to farm that he told of Doris, a

nine year old girl who, when asked what she wanted most, said she wanted a suitcase.

Why?

. . . because I could keep all my things together, and they‟d never get lost,

wherever we go. I have a few things that are mine – the comb, the rabbit‟s

tail my daddy gave me before he died, the lipstick and the fan, and like

that – and I don‟t want to go and lose them, and I‟ve already lost a lot of

things. I had a luck bracelet and I left it someplace, and I had a scarf, a

real pretty one, and it got lost, and a mirror, too. That‟s why if I could have

a place to put my things, my special things, then I‟d have them and if we

went all the way across the country and back, I‟d still have them, and I‟d

keep them.” (Coles, 1971:92-3)

Her sense of place („a place to put my things‟), her sense, then, of permanence was

reduced to a suitcase - no, not a suitcase, the wish for a suitcase.

Fr. Joe‟s kids were certainly in better circumstances than that. They were not in constant

movement. They hadn‟t been moved across the country. But still, was there a sense of

permanence here? Further, as the recipients of charity they may well feel like guests in

someone else‟s home. „Don‟t touch anything. It belongs to someone else.‟

But, if that‟s the case, how, then, do they maintain some sense of their place in the world,

a sense of belonging? Is that even possible? If, as some architectural theorists would

have it, architecture is about „place-making‟, then is there any kind of architecture that

can make a place for them or at least support their own making of place? Can

architecture itself perform any stabilizing continuity in their lives? Or, is it only through the

relationships they have with each other (which themselves are changing as new children

come in and others leave)? Was there any meaning at all in this physical environment?

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Certainly, as I looked around, my trained architect‟s eye could find little to hang onto.

On the other hand, in watching the kids engage in the occasional after-dinner game as I

came in and set my material up on the table Tuesday evenings, it was obvious that they

perceived and used the space they had in quite a different way from me. As I watched

them play outside on the quiet street (one of the few in the city, I must say!) or inside in

the garage/storage area, I realized that much of this was simply „given‟ space, neither

purpose-built nor really theirs. Perhaps not „given‟ space, then, but taken space. But,

theirs or not, there were still those places to hide, to be quiet and those places to expend

all that excess energy – climbing the walls, so to speak.

It reminded me of something Jane Jacobs talked about in The Death and Life of Great

American Cities. She described the „secret passage‟ that her son told her about, “a

secret hiding place some nine inches wide between two buildings, where he secretes

treasures that people have put out for the sanitation truck collections . . .” (Jacobs,

1961:85). Essentially it is space that is turned into adventure by the imagination, not

space that is purpose-built for „adventure‟ like designed adventure playgrounds. In this

convoluted set of buildings that had grown without design, there were more than

enough of such „disordered‟ spaces (Jones, 2000:37)!

As these questions arose, I began to think that instead of teaching, „this is my pencil. Your

pencil is over there.‟, I could just as easily be substituting the word „building‟, „window‟,

„sunlight‟ for pencil. I began to bring in photographs of different buildings and asked

them what they liked. Around the big dining room table they poured over these

architectural picture books with an enthusiasm I had never seen in my architecture

students – that standard cynical cool of the 20-year-old, black-clad architecture student.

Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris was quite a hit with the more colourfully dressed and

enthusiastic children. They were fascinated with it‟s flying buttresses. I wrote „flying

buttresses‟ on the little white board that was hanging precariously from the wall. Are

these words that will in any way be useful to them in English? Not likely, but the very

shape of these buttresses could easily be mimicked by the kids. From that they could

begin to understand some of the basics of structure as they were learning a little English.

I took in plans of houses and office buildings and asked them to identify from the furniture

layouts the names of the rooms and then the furniture in it. It seemed legitimate to learn

to understand a plan while using it to learn some English vocabulary and grammar.

As with all things involving children, though, you have to keep moving. Even architecture

students would not sit still examining plans all the time. I had to find something else to

keep their attention.

Rights – With this thought of the need for belonging, for a sense of place that they could

develop, I began to think about this in terms of the relationship between this need and

their rights. Partly because I was in the midst of talking about it to my architecture

students in their Ethics class and partly because it was the week of the anniversary of its

signing, I brought in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and wrote Article 1 on the

white board:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are

endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a

spirit of brotherhood.

Now I knew that many of these words were a problem4 but since they had dictionaries

from school, I had the older kids help the younger ones in explaining these words to each

other. After we went through each of them together, I had them all recite it. I pointed at

each word as we went along. We went through it about 5 times. By that last time their

voices were loud and confident.

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And as they recited, I began to think more directly about the relationship between these

words and their lives. Such words, and others like them, must be more than simply legal

terms. They must be something more than what one can memorize and recite. They

must be felt. They must be acted upon to be understood. It is one thing to use the word

dignity and quite another to achieve it. As I looked over these faces I thought these

words had to be implemented in some way.

I remembered a poem by William Blake:

Is this a holy thing to see

In a rich and fruitful land,

Babes reduc‟d to misery,

Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?

Can it be a song of joy?

And so many children poor?

It is a land of poverty!

(Holy Thursday from Songs of Experience, William Blake)

Can this exhortation of Blake‟s fall on deaf ears? He wrote that 200 years ago when

Rousseau and Jefferson and many others were raising their voices and their pens in a call

for freedom and dignity. But when you look on the streets of Bangkok or San Francisco,

Calcutta or Toronto, or Blake‟s London 200 years later, not much has changed. Babies

born addicted to heroin, babies born with AIDS, babies left in dumpsters, babies abused,

beaten with hangers, burned, shaken to death, left starving, locked in closets, sent to

war, sold for profit. „Is that trembling cry a song?‟ Oh, I don‟t think so. A lament? A

dirge? Surely the human race can do better than this.

And these children in front of me were the lucky ones. They had been, in some way,

„evicted‟ from their homes, yes, but saved from worse fates. Now, the house they were in

was safe, clean, and caring. They would not want for food or education or clothes here.

Their experience of „eviction‟ was certainly not within the definition set out by the UN

Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This was not the „permanent or

temporary removal against their will of individuals, families and/or communities from the

homes and/or land which they occupy, without the provision of, and access to,

appropriate forms of legal or other protection‟5. While it‟s true that these children have

been removed from their homes for all sorts of reasons, the state or HDF or the neighbours

are doing it for their own protection. Nonetheless, they are displaced. When I think

about their removal from whatever situation they have found themselves, there are all

kinds of important aspects that come to mind, such as the effects of displacement on:

educational development

the development of autonomy

social development

coping with change

The fact is, though, in what I was doing, I hadn‟t considered these issues at all. As I

worked with them, my focus began to shift towards the means by which children, given

those circumstances of displacement, can develop some sense of their ability and their

right to have some control over their destiny and, in this instance, over their built

environment.

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In order to begin that process they need to have some basic knowledge about what is

possible and they needed to see more than words in the Universal Declaration. If such

words are to have any meaning at all they must have meaning to these children, the

heirs of the chimney sweeps, the exploited, the orphans and street children that Blake

wrote about in his Songs of Innocence and Experience. For them to have meaning there

must be action associated with them.

Further, if architecture was to have any real meaning, that meaning, like the meaning of

the words we were reciting, would have to be judged by them, not architectural

magazines. And architecture too would be judged by the actions we take in the world.

Of course, that meant that as an architect, my own actions in the world would be

judged by my ability to make these ideas visceral. I recalled Friere‟s admonition:

It is a farce to affirm that men are people and thus should be free, yet to do

nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality.” (Friere, 1972:26)

I had to use what knowledge I had in some concrete way, in a way that moved beyond

the straightforward supply of technical expertise to those who could afford it. If

architecture is to have any relevance to society it must be here, in its relationship to

rights. Architecture relates to dignity. Dignity is built on empowerment. Empowerment

relates to the freedom of choice and that relates to access to and the use of information.

Information must be democratised.

3. ARCHITECTURE FOR KIDS

What I had to do was develop an architecture program for these children, not an English

program. I had to pass on information that I had – information that they could use to

change their own environment. This was based on a couple of premises:

that the information concerning architecture would be useful for them in

improving their built environment, and

that I could impart that information in some way.

The first premise is arguable. Can an understanding of architectural principles and

processes actually be empowering? Emancipating? Le Corbusier posed that question in

another form in his conclusion to Towards a New Architecture: “Architecture or

Revolution. Revolution can be avoided.” I think Corb was being somewhat deterministic

about architecture in saying that. In effect he was suggesting that this new architecture

could make new people. What I am thinking about here is that knowledge of the

principles of architecture can make individuals more aware of the choices they have in

the built environment. Knowledge of the processes can expand awareness of the how

decisions are made and by whom. Knowing that allows one to understand the leverage

points of decisions about the built environment.

The second premise could only be tested by trying it. In order to do that, though, I would

need some information from people who have done this before. It was hard enough

teaching something about architecture to young adults. Trying to teach young children

would be quite a different matter. I would need some help with that. Not just with the

language barrier between us but with devising a program for teaching something about

architecture to kids of this age.

I recalled that, while I was still living in Vancouver, the Architectural Institute of British

Columbia had developed a program for the school system in the province to aid

teachers mainly from the Kindergarten to Grade 7 level in their teaching of visual arts.

The Architecture for Kids Resource Guide consisted of 16 lessons that would help children

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develop “an understanding of the processes that shape the human-made environment.”

(Arnston, 1997:6) I contacted the AIBC and had them send me a copy of the Guide.

When I went through it I found that it sparked some ideas, but it was not directly useful for

the purposes I had in mind. I had already done some of the exercises with the kids when I

showed them floor plans of buildings and had them identify the rooms from the furniture.

The idea, though, of talking about the Greek agora and it‟s relationship to our ideas of

city planning seemed like too much of a cultural stretch. Beyond that I felt that the

approach that was being taken by the Guide tended to view architecture as another

academic subject. It was teaching kids „about‟ architecture and as such served to

develop an understanding of the profession so students would be good future consumers

of the service. That may put a cynical cast on something that is certainly a useful pursuit,

but my intention here was developing in a different direction. I viewed architecture as

one of many tools by which we politicise and democratise the environment. Other tools

of democratisation are the Declarations, Covenants, Conventions, Constitutions and laws

that protect the rights of individuals to make choices and to be heard. For architecture

to be a tool of democratisation, the process of design must be participatory. John Turner

made that point many years ago in his writings. Colin Ward, in the Preface to Turner‟s

book, Housing by People, summarized these as „Turner‟s three laws of housing:

1. When dwellers control the major decisions and are free to make their

own contribution to the design, construction or management of their

housing, both the process and the environment produced stimulate

individual and social well-being.

2. The important thing about housing is not what it is, but what it does in

people‟s lives. In other words, that dweller satisfaction is not necessarily

related to the imposition of standards.

3. The deficiencies and imperfections in your housing are infinitely more

tolerable if they are your responsibility than if they are somebody else‟s.

(Turner, 1976:5-6)

Further, control over the built environment concerns autonomy.

[S]ince physical survival and personal autonomy are the preconditions for

any individual action in any culture, they constitute the most basic human

needs – those which must be satisfied to some degree before actors can

effectively participate in their form of life to achieve any other valued goals.

(Doyal and Gough, 1991:54)

Without autonomy, then, we cannot really talk rationally about human rights. How, then,

can we encourage control? How can we encourage autonomy? How can we, beyond

that, encourage active citizenship? These are all concerns, as well, of the Convention on

the Rights of the Child (CRC). There were two article that seemed particularly relevant to

these circumstances:

Article13

1. The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include

freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless

of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other

media of the child‟s choice

Article 29

1. States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:

(a) The development of the child‟s personality, talents and mental and physical

abilities to their fullest potential;

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(b) The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and

for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.

How can these rights be understood and implemented? The first step, it seemed to me

concerned the idea of active citizenship, both for the children and my students – the

cornerstone of democracy. And how can that be taught? As roger Hart pointed out:

“Only through direct participation can children develop a genuine appreciation

of democracy and a sense of their own competence and responsibility to

participate.” (Hart, 1997:3)

I felt this even more emphatically applied to my architecture students. They were being

„professionalised‟ in the pejorative sense that concerned Illich in many of his books.6 As

such they were, even by osmosis, moving away from those principles of the

democratisation of knowledge and moving more towards becoming gate-keepers of it.

If we believe, then, in these principles, we must act upon them in some way.

The Program – We had reached the end of the school year. The children were out of

school, as were my architecture students. The university students were free in April and

May. The children were free from the middle of March to the middle of May. It seemed

like the perfect time to find some volunteers amongst those who were still in the studio.

Since most students were already heading home or off to work in an office, there were

few left from which to choose. However, I managed to cajole two young women just

finishing second year7. The fact that they were women and the fact that they were in 2nd

year was purely coincidental. However, it worked out well in three respects:

Gender – it would be better for the girls to see that women are architects too.

Youth – the fact that these students had just finished 2nd year meant that they

were not only a little closer in age to the older children, but they were not as

jaded as 5th year students had become. The elements of architecture were

fresh in their heads and they were not yet paralysed by too much information.

Language – the instruction had to be in Thai or it simply would not work. If the

children were trying to learn English at the same time as they were learning

about architecture, it would not work at all.

Before they started on that first Saturday morning in April, I talked to my students about

what I was hoping to do. Not unexpectedly, my hopes far outstripped the reality of the

experience. This is not to say that the experience was disappointing. Not at all. But I did

start out with some rather grandiose schemes about what was possible. I had sent an

outline of the proposal to Fr. Joe and to Tim Hague, the administrator for HDF and the

Girls‟ Home.

My objective was:

1. To expose children to the many factors that make up the built environment.

2. To improve their ability to design their own environment.

3. To understand the process of design.

4. To design and build their own playground.

The proposed program (based largely on the AIBC Guide) was:

1. What is architecture, engineering, planning? Drawing exercises

2. How do buildings stand up? - exercises with sticks, etc. (bracing, geodesics)

3. Materials. Where they come from and how we use them

4. Form - the room (light, entry, height, etc.)

5. Scale

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6. Uses - eating, sleeping, cooking, washing

7. Combining uses

8. mapping the community, designing the community - a place to play, to work,

for school, for socializing.

9. designing a playground

10. building the playground somewhere in Klong Toei.

Over the summer holiday period of April and May my students went to the Girls‟ Home on

Soi 40 every Saturday until the girls started back to school in the third week of May.

That left us with six Saturday mornings from 9 to noon to cover some basic material about

architecture.

The ten lessons I had planned were cut. There was no place to build a playground, nor

was there any time to design one. However, my students took the girls through a number

of basic steps. Among these were:

Finding out what they knew of architecture (I had already primed them with

drawings and photographs in the English class)

Drawing themselves and each other

Experimenting with coloured pencils

The use of line – curved and straight, jagged and curly, and the feelings we

might associate with them. Exercises in using these lines together

Water colours – kids love the mess! The house mother was not impressed.

Basic colour theory – warm and cool colours

The creation of space – building models. Using the dining/play room as the

example and placing furniture in it.

My two students just waded into the fray. That first class was, like most of the classes

following, a little chaotic. We wound up interfering with the lunch timetable. Little folding

tables were brought out and the hungriest children, seeing the food was about to be

served, immediately lost interest in drawing lines on paper. The raced off to be first to

eat.

As we gathered up our things and left the children to their noodles, my two students, Toy

and Tie, stopped outside the door, as much as anything to catch their breath. One of

them turned to me and said, „I feel so ashamed. These are children. They should not

have to live this way.‟ I thought to myself, but these are the lucky ones. The conditions

here are good. In the slums or on the streets where you see children running between

the stopped cars at a traffic light selling gum at 2 in the morning, things are much worse.

And yet, we all walk by, our eyes and thoughts on something else – anything else. I

thought of Bob Dylan‟s admonition in The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,

“But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,

Take the rag away from your face.

Now ain‟t the time for your tears.”

Most of the time we can simply rationalize away almost any inequity, any injustice. Often

the response is that somebody else, usually the government, should do something – the

argument being that I pay taxes so that the government will take on that responsibility.

What that does, of course, as Michael Ignatieff pointed out, is create a distance

between individuals in a society – a distance that allows for the evasion of our

responsibilities to each other as fellow citizens (Ignatieff, 1986:10). The mediation of the

state „walls us off from each other.‟

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I saw that wall, however briefly, had broken down for her and she was confronted, no

doubt for the first time with inescapable inequity. The philosophical notions of karma or

moral worth tend not to comfort or support our sense of justice. But is shame the

response? Yes, shame has validity in that the disparity between one‟s own wealth (and

the options that go with it) and another‟s poverty has little basis beyond the chance of

birth. It has validity particularly when one has remained oblivious to that disparity within

one‟s own society. But shame can be completely paralysing. As an emotion, it seems to

me it is only useful if it motivates change in the way things are. I didn‟t want her to leave

that first morning feeling ashamed and hopeless. That would be entirely

counterproductive. „Don‟t feel ashamed,‟ I said. „You have already started to make

things change for the better.‟

Over the following weeks, my students continued on their program, getting the children

to draw and build models. Along with these exercises, there were two notable points.

Change - One morning I arrived to find that neither of my students were there. I was

completely dependent on them for bringing the materials for the class of the day and I

was also dependent on them for language. Rather than have the girls getting restless, I

decided to take the materials at hand – the room, the children, a white board and

markers – and initiate my own impromptu exercise. I drew a plan of the dining room on

the white board. Having been in this room week after week with the girls, my

architectural senses were reaching a breaking point. This L-shaped room had little space

for them to do much but sit around the two tables. There was little room around either

table for movement. The TV was in the far end of the L so that children at one of the

tables could not watch it. The whole space, not to mention its colour, was awkward and

drab. How did this contribute to the concept of dignity that all these lofty documents

supported? Perhaps there was some possibility even here in this room for the girls to

begin to take ownership.

They had no trouble understanding what I was drawing. They were used to plans by

now. I drew the furniture on the plan. By means of a little pantomime, I indicated to

them how awkward the placement of the table was. Then I drew and redrew

arrangements of the furniture on the board that eased these problems a bit. We finally

came to one that seemed to suit them. I looked around the room and asked them if

they thought that one was the best. I seemed to have agreement.

The next thing I suggested was that we actually rearrange the room to match the plan.

The change that this involved was turning the one table by 90 degrees to allow more

room around the long sides of it. Everything stopped! All the children shook their heads

and waved their hands. No!

What had happened here? I‟m still confounded by it. Was it a fear of change? A fear

of authority (the „den mother‟ or Fr. Joe might disapprove, especially if they had not

been asked beforehand)? Had I misread their apparent assent to the change? Was

there a leap yet to be made between what is drawn and what is done? They were

adamant, though, that the table was not to be moved. I could not help but think back

to Coles‟ description of the migrant farm workers and their longing for permanence. And

here I was, the typical architect, wanting just to keep changing things. „Place-making‟.

Colour – Despite that setback, I still thought there must be something they could do to lay

claim to this place – to make it their own. So, while my students were giving the girls

some pointers about colour, I drew a sketch of the north wall of the space. This wall, in

the drab two-tone green, had a door to the garage/storage area and a set of louvered

windows. I returned the following week with about 50 copies of the outline elevation of

the wall. I asked them to colour it in any way they chose. If they wanted to do more

than one scheme so much the better. I was hoping that we could go through a

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simulation of the development process with them. In essence, I thought, this wall was no

different than a building in terms of the process involved:

Conceptual design

Approval of schematics (I wanted the girls to choose which one or

combination of drawings they thought they could all live with)

Jurisdictional approval – once the girls have decided, they would have to

present it to the authorities for their approval. In this case, Fr. Joe, and the

administration.

Mobilization for construction (in this case I wanted to get the materials – paint,

brushes and so on – and have the graphics department of HDF assist them in

painting the wall themselves. In other words there would be no public

tender!)

I got about 40 different

sketches from them (see Figure

4). Some of them were

scribbles, while others were

quite intense and exciting, at

least to my eye. I wanted to

see this implemented, if only to

liven up the colour of the

space. However, at that point

I learned that the girls may

have to move out of the

building in any case. The hope

that this exercise would lead to

some sense of Turner‟s „dweller

control‟ would be defeated

entirely if they had to leave the

place as soon as they made

the effort to take some kind of

ownership over it. Until I found out more about what was going on, it seemed

counterproductive to pursue this exercise as anything more than simply fun with colour.

Rather than accept this as an inevitability, though, I thought there may be something we

could do to encourage the retention of the building for the girls. This is what led to phase

two of the Kids and Architecture project.

4. THE GIRLS’ HOME

In June I started teaching my Housing course at the Architecture School. There were only

4 students who enrolled in this elective course. Perhaps this says something about the

interest in housing in architectural circles.

Nevertheless, rather than cancel the course for lack of enrollment, I decided that there

were things I could do with 4 students that I couldn‟t with 20. So, after going through

some of the theory of housing and housing policy, I decided that my four students8 were

going to get a practical encounter with some clients and real housing. I wanted them to

work with the children, the other residents and the staff of the HDF Girls‟ Home in creating

alternative design proposals for a renovation of the building. In order to do that they

would have to go through a typical design process for a renovation:

Assessment of the existing structure

As-built drawings

Client/user interviews (including participatory design)

Figure 4 - one of the many drawings of the north wall of the dining

room

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Concept drawings

Presentation to client for review and approvals

Figure 5 - the ground floor plan - existing

The building - It is composed of 5 double shophouses joined together. Each of these

standard shophouses is approximately 16 metres deep by 8 metres wide. This creates a

total floor plate of some 15.6 m by 40 m (624 sm.) on three floors for a total of

approximately 1872 sm of floor area. The plans indicate space allocation that has

developed largely from existing circumstances. This results in little coherence in the plan

and problems with circulation (see Figure 5)

The people - There are 38 girls living in this space along with the house mother, the cook,

two other administration staff and a French nun. In addition there are spare bedrooms

for female volunteers that are working for HDF on a short term basis and for other guests

of the Foundation. The age range of the children is from 4 to 18.

Presently, the existing arrangement of the floor

plan offers little privacy for the older girls.

In addition to this, there are other physical problems:

Figure 6 - settlement cracking

Figure 7 - storage area

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Settlement - where the individual buildings are joined there has been some

differential settlement that has created cracks between the buildings. This occurs

on each floor and extends to the roof. At the roof level leaking occurs where

construction/expansion joints have proved inadequate. (see Figure 6 above left)

Storage - there is inadequate and poorly placed storage in the building. There

are many organizations that donate materials, but there is no adequate place to

store it except in the garage on the ground floor and other spaces on the upper

floors. On the ground floor this has severely limited the area where children might

play. (See figure 7 above right)

Finally, from observation, it seemed that, in addition to a lack of privacy, there was a lack

of light, cross ventilation, toilets.

In summary, then, the assessed physical problems of the building were:

lack of fire stairs and exits

structural settlement

lack of appropriate storage

no room for play

lack of toilets

lack of natural light and ventilation

water damage due to roof leakage

Based on these observations, it was clear that a renovation to the building was needed.

However, that would only be the case if there was some intention on the part of HDF to

stay in the building and use it for its current purpose. These problems might suggest that

renovating the building might not be worthwhile, particularly if a new building, the Mercy

Centre, was going to open in July of 2001. The accommodation there would be clean

and new. So why should the building be kept? Why should it be kept for the same

purpose?

There are two main reasons that I saw:

because it‟s a sustainable practice

because it will work best for the children

Sustainability - While there are many important issues that can and should be covered

under the banner of sustainability, what is of immediate importance here concerns the

use of resources. William McDonough, the American architect, stated in one of his 9

„Hannover Principles‟ prepared in advance of the Hannover Expo of 2000, that we must

„Eliminate the concept of waste‟ (McDonough, 1992:5). Given that the construction

industry accounts for 20-30% of all the waste generated (North American figures), it is

important on that level alone to ensure that these materials are well utilized.

Beyond the straightforward issue of resource management, there is a clear opportunity

for the children to see a practical demonstration of just some of the implications of the

concept of sustainability. That would require some education in that subject area for my

students as well.

Most importantly, the concept of democracy is intimately connected to sustainability.

How decisions are made about development will substantially affect the sustainability of

the ensuing actions.

Democracy is an inherent part of the sustainable development process.

Sustainable development must be participatory development. For people

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to prosper anywhere they must participate as competent citizen in the

decisions and processes that affect their lives. (Roseland, 1998:24)

As important as these concepts of resources and participatory development are, they

had to be conveyed in some way. There I was dependent on my students to pass that

on. The problem I began to see there is that they really had no exposure to this in their

architecture curriculum. That was an entirely different problem to tackle.

Children - There is also an opportunity for the children to make this house their own home

in a much more concrete way. In so doing, there are opportunities for them to learn

something about:

their built environment

the process of development

their rights

resource management

maintenance

construction

Such opportunities for increasing autonomy and practical education arise infrequently

and should, therefore, be seized. Participation in the process of design is essential to the

understanding of their right to influence their built environment.

This meant that before they entered this participatory process my four students had to

have some idea of its purpose and what you might call the „rules of engagement‟.

Process - There were eight steps in this process:

1. The students measured the building one Saturday afternoon. As they measured,

they made a photographic record of the building and made notes on problems

they observed.

2. As-built drawings were prepared and from those drawings a model was built. This

model was a working model of the building that could be used by the children to

understand the different parts of it.

3. With the model prepared, the students went to the Girls‟ Home and began a

participatory process with the children. There were three steps in this, initially:

a. The children were divided into four groups (one for each of the students).

b. Each group took their „architect‟ for a tour around the building, pointing out

problems that they saw.

c. At the end of the tour, with the notes compiled by the students, everyone

gathered around the model and began to make further comments about

what could be changed and what couldn‟t. In order to get information the

students had them draw their rooms or anything else they wished to draw.

This process went on for about 2 more hours.

4. The students visited the new Mercy Centre to see the Boys‟ Home and the other

services available there.

5. With the information collected, the students returned to KMUTT to interpret all this

data - the measured drawings, their own observations and the children‟s

comments and designs - into something they could use to develop a schematic

design.

6. A program was developed from this information.

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7. With the program in hand, each student developed his own design in response to

the information.

8. Upon completion of the designs, each students presented their work to the

children.

With the as-built drawings prepared and, from that, a working model of the building, my

students were almost ready to begin the process of working with the girls on step 3.

I told the students we should divide the girls into different age groups. Under 7, 7-10, 11-

14, and over 14 was my first thought, based on their different interests, different skills, and

different needs. I suggested to them that we start by showing them the model and

explaining all the spaces in it. That should be followed by a tour of the building with each

of the four age groups pointing out what they like and don‟t like about each room and

then taking my students through the activities of a whole day. What happens when you

get up in the morning? When you leave for school, which door do you go out of, which

way do you go? When you come back from school what happens?

After the tour I suggested that we do

some other exercises to learn more about

their needs. One example was a wish list.

Henry Sanoff in his book, Design Games,

calls it a Wish Poem – a collaborative

poem about their room, their playspace,

their dining room, their workplace and so

on.

Another exercise I thought they might try

is to draw your ideal room, ideal play

area, ideal dining room, kitchen, lounge,

bedroom (see Figure 8)

With that minimal preparation, we all

headed over to Soi 40. When we got

there my students first explained the

model to them (see figure 9) and then

suggested the girls break into four groups

according to age. They flatly refused to

do it!

I was concerned at the outset that the

smaller children may have trouble

participating if they were surrounded by

older, more technically competent

children. Instead, a couple of the older

girls set about to put numbers in a hat

from which all of them would draw

randomly. The groups were formed that

way. From my perspective, the older

children assisted the younger ones in

articulating their wishes and their problems. I couldn‟t help but smile. I was witnessing

autonomous action. They were not intimidated by any authority we might have had. It

was their choice based on what they knew – and what we didn‟t know.

Figure 8 - a student imagines her bedroom

Figure 9 - studying the model

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After the tour of the building each of the four groups returned to the model and

discussion continued. As a result of that and separate discussions with adult residents

and staff, a set of programme requirements for the design were established. These were:

Children:

1. Playground

2. Adequate bathrooms/toilets

3. Improved lighting

4. Improved ventilation

5. Better view

6. Zoning for security

7. Better privacy (from the street)

8. Improve circulation

9. More privacy for older children

Staff:

1. Better access to kitchen, office

2. Improvements to clean-up room

3. Better storage

4. Better circulation between rooms

5. Improve laundry - especially for drying

6. Improve privacy

7. Improve visual control over children.

With that information in hand, my students could then begin some preliminary design

schemes for presentation to the children.

With the presentation, it was my hope to have each student present their work and then

have the children choose which one they preferred. In fact, I had thought about the

idea of having the girls actually giving my students a grade. Not surprisingly, the children

said, „We like them all!‟ They refused to choose between them.

Part of the problem in choosing, the students pointed out, was actually a lack of

information. In effect the building,

despite the use of the model, was

too big to understand as a whole.

For example, the relationship

between heat and ventilation and

the location of bedrooms on the

west face of the building posed too

many variables for most of the

children. More work would have to

be done to highlight these

relationships.

Despite these problems, each

designer presented a model and

drawings. There were similarities in

each, largely because the program

demanded it. They were all

variations on a courtyard scheme

that provided more light into the centre of the building and a supervised play area off

the street.

Figure 10 - perspective drawing of ground floor revisions

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In one scheme (see Figure 10), by adding furniture to the axonometric drawing it was

hoped that the children would better understand the project. He tried to make them

guess the purpose of the room from the furniture that was in it.

Each of these designs offered something in response to the program. Typically there was

more light and better consolidation of circulation. However, the basic architectural

drawback was the exiting. This must be addressed more coherently in the future design.

The consolidation of the play area around a central courtyard seemed to be a solid

idea. It could both provide light to the inner part of the building and provide the

opportunity for staff supervision of the play area.

5. CONCLUSION

A. THE NEXT STAGE

Clearly there is more work to be done with the children in realizing their project but that

will be contingent on what the administration decides to do. Will they move them to the

Mercy Centre or allow them to stay and work on what I view as the issues of autonomy

and citizenship?

Should they decide – as I hope they do – for the latter, the next step in the process is to

further develop and consolidate these plans by resolving the fire exits and circulation and

planning around a central courtyard.

Step 1 - Architecture students revise their plans to meet the exiting requirements and

improve flexibility for privacy.

Step 2 - Present the work to the children and begin another round of design games

concentrating on individual spaces. They should go room by room. Play area, dining

room, living area, bedrooms (and particularly who gets increased privacy).

Step 3 - when these program requirements are completed, the students then consolidate

their designs into one final design

Step 4 - Develop a preliminary cost estimate for that design for budget approval.

B. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

There are a number of questions raised in going through this experience. I see three

areas of concern:

The Kids and Architecture Program

The Architecture curriculum

Replicability

Kids and Architecture – my main concern here is that I don‟t lift their hopes of change

only to dash them on the jagged shoals of bureaucracy. I don‟t want the lesson learned

to be, „You can‟t change City Hall‟! I feel as if we have taken these girls partway down a

road and that is simply not far enough. In order for them to understand that they do and

should have some say in the development of their environment; in order for them to have

some understanding of the process of development, they must actual see it through.

The Architecture curriculum – I found that my students and I were operating by the seat

of our pants. While I have had some experience with participatory methodology with

adults, I found that that experience has only limited applicability to children. I felt that

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my students could have used some specific training in participatory methodology. It has

a broad value beyond this work with children.

There are other weaknesses in the architecture curriculum I see as well. First, students

should understand better the role that professionals can play in development. This would

have to include a redefinition of development as well. Second, we need better training

of architecture students and the responsibilities of professionals in responding to these

human rights and basic needs. The implications of that on the practice of architecture

are quite extensive. They relate to community development practices, to funding, to

infrastructure development and to participatory processes for both adults and children.

Replicability – This project was actually made easy by the fact that all the children were

available at one time; they were organized; they had a place from which to work . I kept

asking myself the question, What if we were to attempt this without the supporting

institution of HDF? What if we were to go straight into one of the slum communities here

and start doing it? HDF is an organized community. If this were to be attempted in an

unorganized community a great deal more preparation would have to be done. I think it

is important to take that step, though. It seems to me that it is possible, given a revised

curriculum, to take architecture students in any city and use them in training programs

that can use the children‟s own communities as the object of change. This could serve

not only as a means to improve their own community but as a means to engage

architecture (for once) in the rights of all citizens, not just those who can afford to

consume those services. We could actually train what Sam Mockbee calls the „citizen

architect‟.

C. LESSONS LEARNED

In the UNICEF document, A Child‟s Right to Sustainable Development, a forceful point is

made:

“Education, particularly of girls, is considered a critical strategy to break the

vicious spiral of social and economic disparities, exploitation, illiteracy,

poverty and environmental degradation. Education takes place at many

levels: informally, through a child‟s interaction with the physical and social

environment, in non-formal settings through NGOs and others; and at

schools. Education reflects societal values. If it is to reflect society‟s best

values, if it is to be an instrument for social transformation, children must

learn more than basic numeracy and literacy. Environmental education

can enhance the life skills and adaptability of women and children and

help them achieve sustainable livelihoods.

Whatever the setting, all children must be given the opportunity to learn

enabling life skills and the tools that equip them to become productive

contributors to society. . . . We must provide them with appropriate

information and knowledge about the environment - beginning with their

own - to engender respect for the larger world and realize their own role

and responsibility in supporting it.”

If change is to happen, it can only come from those who most need it to happen. And

they can only do that if they have the tools at their disposal. That implies education. This

education about the tools of autonomy implies the beginnings of moral agency. It has

been argued that without moral agency being a holder of rights is somewhat empty

because it empowers “outside professionals to represent the interests of the child . . .”

(Pupavac, 2001:100). If this is to be overcome, then rights must be more than „legal‟; they

must be acted upon. They are not just legal instruments, they are ideas that must

change the way we all act towards one another. The law can support rights (as a tool)

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but the people themselves must exercise rights. That means changing the way we

cultivate the design process as well. If that is to be the case, children, too, must begin to

exercise those muscles of democracy and rights by action. This is not an intellectual

understanding of legal remedies available. Rather it is a visceral understanding of those

rights of expression through action in the environment. If they can learn that it is possible

to influence the direction of their environment, then the next step is to use the tools at

their disposal - in this case architectural tools - to make the necessary improvements in

their own lives. As they do that they learn what it is to be engaged citizens. That cannot

be learned from books. It can only be learned by acting in the world. Autonomy and

citizenship – integral parts of the CRC – can only come through active practice of those

principles of democracy. Action, not just words.

One of the lessons I hope my students have learned from this is that architecture is, or can

be, one of the tools that people use to realize that vision.

One of the lessons I hope the children can learn from their experience is that change is

possible and that it can come from their own hearts, their own will to make their world

better than it is now.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARNSTON, Carole. Architecture for Kids. Vancouver: Architectural Institute of British

Columbia, 1997.

BLAKE, William. The Portable Blake. Edited by Alfred Kazin. New York: The Viking Press,

1967.

COLES, Robert. Uprooted Children: The Early Life of Migrant Farm Workers. New York:

Harper & Row, 1971.

DOYAL, Len & GOUGH, Ian. A Theory of Human Need. London: The Macmillan Press,

1991)

FRIERE, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Books, 1972.

HART, Roger. Children’s Participation: The Theory and Practice of Involving Young

Citizens in Community Development and Environmental Care. London: Earthscan

Publications, Ltd., 1997.

IGNATIEFF, Michael. The Needs of Strangers. New York: Penguin Books, 1986.

JACOBS, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage Books,

1961.

JONES, Owain. “Melting Geography: Purity, disorder, childhood and space.” pp 29 – 47

in HOLLOWAY, Sarah L. & VALENTINE, Gill. Children’s Geographies: Playing, Living,

Learning. London: Routledge, 2000.

Le CORBUSIER. Towards a New Architecture, translated from Vers Une Architecture (1923)

by Frederick Etchells. New York: Praeger Publ., 1960.

McDONOUGH, William. The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability. See

http://www.mcdonough.com/principles.pdf

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PUPAVAC, Vanessa. “Misanthropy Without Borders: The International Children‟s Rights

Regime” pp 95 – 112 in Disasters, 2001, 25(2).

ROSELAND, Mark. Toward Sustainable Communities. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society

Publishers, 1998.

SANOFF, Henry. Design Games. Los Altos, CA: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1979.

TURNER, John F.C. Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments.

London: Marion Boyars, 1976.

UNICEF. A Child’s Right to Sustainable Development. See

http://www.unicef.org/programme/wes/pubs/right/rio_e.pdf

1 See

http://www.mercycentre.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=88&l

ang=en for further information and background on the Girls‟ Home and other projects and

services of the Human Development Foundation (HDF) in Bangkok.

2 This story was told to me by Tom Crowley, a fundraiser for HDC

3 See Martin Pawley, Architecture versus Housing. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971.

4 Aside from the ambiguities of their English meaning, there is the ongoing argument concerning

issues of cultural relativism and rights as well as a common understanding of the development of

the child and the implications of the phrase „endowed with reason and conscience‟. These are

outside my scope here.

5 See E/CN.4/1994/20, 7 December 1993. Para. 11.

http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/TestFrame/6757007dfc3fe19e8025672b005e1b67?

Opendocument

6 See particularly Disabling Professions, London:Boyars, 1977

7 They were Rosana Nunoi and Sukanda Kitimahakun, architecture students entering 3rd year.

8 The students were Pakawan Archariyanon, Rachan Choknana, Korpsin Songsittichok, and

Natnarin Tiamsuk. All 4th year architecture students.