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
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
Graeme Bristol 02 APR 02
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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.