The document discusses how architecture can benefit from understanding how children learn and play. It argues that children are naturally creative and innovative before these qualities are discouraged through social conditioning. Children think in operational models and see the world as something to explore rather than something to be programmed. The document advocates designing architecture and software with a playful, exploratory mindset inspired by how children learn, rather than through strict engineering approaches. This would make architecture more enjoyable, creative, and suited to how humans naturally think.

1. Great Architecture
is Child’s Play
Jim Coplien
Big Kid

2. Architecture gives
us…
Firmitas (structure firmness)
Utilitas (usefulness or commodity)
Venustas (beauty or delight)

3. The Problem

4. Our venustas sucks
"In software engineering — if there really be
such a thing — we have worked thoroughly
on Firmness, some during the last 10 years
on Commodity, and none on Delight. To the
world of computer science, there can be no
such thing as Delight because beauty and
anything from the arts or the so-called soft
part of human activity has nothing to do
with science — it is mere contingency.” —
Richard P. Gabriel

5. Design has given
way to engineering
Creativity and innovation are
fundamental to problem-solving
Engineers (ingénieur?) learn
technique and formal grounding
We don’t teach or encourage
innovative behaviour
Children are born with
imagination; social need for
compliance drives it out of them

6. Children Might
have an Answer
The tabla rasa human — a great
problem-solver
Most mental modes are shaped
by culture, language, and
grownups
We confuse design with
engineering
There is a strong kernel of
“nature”

7. What is a Child?

8. Birth - 2 months:
3 months old: living “in time”
4 months old:
Surfaces move together
if connected and separately
Gravity and inertia, otherwise
6 to 8 months
Causality develops starting
at 6 months but is available
at 12 months
3D objects are cohesive
as they move

9. !
!
We would like to hook into his
current modes of thought in order
to influence him rather than just
trying to replace his model with
one of our own.
— Alan Kay, 1972
!
“Teaching Machine”

10. Learned Behaviour is
Arbitrary and Predestining
Even our models of time and space are
learned — even symmetry!!!
Mental programming models are learned —
not “natural”
Early teaching programs followed the
“behaviouralist school” of Skinner
Architecture becomes fashion: what’s playing
in academia today?

11. Should the computer program
the kid, or should the kid
program the computer? —
Papert (the father of LOGO)
If we teach kids programming, we’re back
to the computer programming the kid
We must re-design computers to fit the
human mind
We might find the primordial human
mind in children

12. Two of Piaget's fundamental
notions are attractive from a
computer scientist's point of
view.
The first is that knowledge,
particularly in the young child, is
retained as a series of
operational models, models
each of which
is somewhat ad hoc and need not
be logically consistent with the
others. (They are essentially
algorithms and strategies rather
than logical axioms, predicates
and theorems.)
What is an operational model
if not an algorithm, a procedure
for accomplishing a goal?

13. Objects from
Piaget? 1972:
However, “The Piagetian framework
contained a hierarchical explanation of
development with procedural memory
emerging during the first five sensorimotor
We feel that a child is a "verb" rather than a
"noun", an actor rather than an object; he is not
a scaled-In particular, up pigeon it or has rat; been he is suggested trying to acquire
that
sub-stages and declarative memory
a model children of his are surrounding not sensitive environment to the need in
for
order empirical to deal and with logical it; his theories consistency are "practical"
in their
notions representations of how to get of from the world. idea A The to idea findings
B
rather of the than study "consistent" presented branches here do of formal
not support
logic, etc. We would like to hook into his
current modes of thought in order to influence
him rather than just trying to replace his model
with one of our own. — Alan Kay, 1972
beginning in the sixth and last sub-stage.
Contemporary investigations of infant
memory have clearly demonstrated that the
infant-toddler has the capacity for
this position.
declarative memory before their temporal
system emerges in their language.

14. Games are a form of
Programmed Instruction
Games create
conformity to a set of
rules
Often appear in
cultures as a way to
prepare children for
adulthood (think
Monopoly / Matador)
At its very best,
architecture is a game
Play
Games
Method

15. We should continue the process of
learning into architecture with play
but in a way that honours our
deeper instincts.

16. Plato
No society has ever really noticed how important play is for social
stability. My proposal is that one should regulate children’s play. Let
them always play the same games, with the same rules and under the
same conditions, and have fun playing with the same toys. That way
you’ll find that adult behaviour and society itself will be stable.
As it is, games are always being changed and modified and new ones
invented, so that youngsters never want the same thing two days
running. They’ve no fixed standard of good or bad behaviour, or of
dress. They fasten on to anyone who comes up with some novelty or
produces something with different shapes, colours, or whatever. This
poses a threat to social stability, because people who promote this kind
of innovation for children are insidiously changing the character of the
young by making them reject the old and value the new. To promote
such expressions and attitudes is a potential disaster for society. . . .

17. Utilitas
Firmitas
Venustas

20. But though this method is
precise, it cannot be used
mechanically.
!
The fact is, that even when we
have seen deep into the
processes by which it is
possible to make a building or
a town alive, in the end, it
turns out that this knowledge
only brings us back to that
part of ourselves which is
forgotten.
!
!
Architecture supports “what happens
there” (operational models !!!)
!

21. Although the process is precise, and can be defined in exact scientific
terms, finally it becomes valuable, not so much because it shows us things
which we don’t know, but instead, because it shows us what we know
already, only daren’t admit because it seems so childish, and so primitive.
!
Indeed it turns out, in the end, that what this method does is simply free
us from all method.
!
And in later traditional societies there are bricklayers, carpenters,
plumbers-but everyone still knows how to design. For example, in japan,
even fifty years ago, every child learned how to lay out a house, just as
children learn football or tennis today. People laid out their houses for
themselves, and then asked the local carpenter to build it for them.
!
A child who helps to shape his room will also help to generate the larger
patterns for the stairway and the common space outside his room.
!
The prismatic buildings of our own time, the buildings built with the
simple geometry of cubes, and circles, spheres, and spirals, and rectangles;
this geometry is the ridive order, created by the childish search for order.

22. 57
4 (e.g., “child process”)
23 (e.g., “child object”)

23. Mental Models, Time,
Form & Language

24. Mental Model
Constructed on-the-spot to fit a
situation
Preserve the structure of the thing they
represent
Possible that some are stored away
We use both procedural (implicit) and
declarative (explicit) models

25. Play

26. ““In every job that must be done
there is an element of fun
You find the fun, and snap!
–Mary Poppins
The job’s a game!”
“Play is perhaps the only human
behavior that integrates and
balances all aspects of human
functioning—a necessary component
for all of us to develop our full
potential (Rogers and Sawyers 1988).

27. What is Play?
Play is intrinsically motivated.
Play is relatively free of externally imposed rules.
Play is carried out as if the activity were real.
Play focuses on the process rather than any
product.
Play is dominated by the players.
And play requires the active involvement of the
player.

28. Play
Architecture encodes recurring past forms
But good architecture also explores alternatives!
Boyd (2009) speculated that the amount of play in
a species correlates with flexibility of action in
the species. If play prepares animals for necessary
adult activities, what are the necessary activities
for which pretend play prepares humans?
Is architecture organised?

29. Play
(Dansky 1980; Dansky and Silverman 1973).
Dansky and Silverman found that children
who played with objects during a play
session produced significantly more uses for
those objects than did a control group.
There is evidence that when pretend play
occurs in multiple sessions over time,
creativity increases. (Kasari, Freeman, and
Paparella (2006))

30. Greek thought
Leisure
(scholē)
Learning
(paideia)
)
Work
Play
(paizein)
Symposia
(drinking)

31. Finite and Infinite
Games
Two kinds of games
Finite games: Constrained by
rules, designed to produce a
winner and a loser
Infinte games: Goal is to keep
playing the game

32. Games Meet
Requirements
Architecture has nothing to do with
requirements

33. Play is a meta-game

34. Child as Architect:
Wearing Many Hats
A number of the principles which led to Moore’s “talking typewriter” are
worth examination. He feels that it is not so much that children lack a long
attention span, but that they have difficulty remaining in the same role with
respect to an idea or activity. The role of “patient listener” to an idea can
quickly lead to boredom and lack of attention, unless either roles can also
be assumed such as “active agent”, “judge” or “game player”, etc. An
environment which allows many perspectives to be taken is very much in
tune with the differentiating, abstracting and integrative activities of the
child. — Kay, 1972

35. DCI
… was created from primitives of
human mental models
Follows from the principles of Kay’s
use of software for children
… seems to solve a lot of problems
innate to academic design approaches

37. Child as Architect: Beyond
Pavlovian programmed
Learning
It’s exploratory rather than
methodological
… powerful application of operative
mental models
… so we can focus on delivering
what helps the end user

39. Conclusion
Learning is play
Learning dynamics require reflective play
Dispense of the formal crap in
architecture
Think playful exploration
Find the child in your end users