By Heba Safey Eldeen
Member of UIA Architecture and Children Work Programme
The understanding of architecture from the early years is a cornerstone in the children’s cognitive and emotional development. Research reveals that learning about architecture helps children and young ones develop their critical thinking, improve imagination and lead to creativity. The physical built environment surrounding the children, where they go and spend their lives and where they interact and socialise, does influence their experiences and contribute to their education in ways that go unnoticed. Learning from and about architecture, the built environment and the city has proven to be a powerful pedagogical tool.
Then again, how can we bring architecture closer to education, and how can we bring education closer to the realities of our cities? Those questions were the pivots of the “De-a Arhitectura TALKS International Conference” held on 8 June 2025, hosted in the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urban Planning, Bucharest, Romania. The topic was explored across a full day of keynote speeches, presentations and discussions. The event offered diverse perspectives on built environment education; from research and cultural policies to local initiatives and innovative educational practices. The conference inspired further dialogue, collaboration, and partnership. The event bridged research and practice through insightful contributions from international speakers, who not only showcased meaningful Built Environment Education (BEE) examples but also framed them within broader analytical perspectives, connecting critical observations with concrete on-the-ground initiatives. Guest speakers from five continents shared diverse perspectives; from research and professional training to community empowerment, social inclusion, online education, local heritage, the city as a learning space, and innovative digital methods. Together, they charted a vibrant roadmap showing how built environment education can support a more empathetic, equitable, and sustainable future. After the event, and facilitated by the “De-a Arhitectura” team and contributors from the network, a number of four parallel workshops acted as spaces of reflection and co-creation. Participants explored themes like tactical urbanism as an educational tool, school-culture networks and funding, inclusion and education for vulnerable groups, and applied ecology in intergenerational educational settings. Insights were documented and synthesised into a shared framework, developed to inspire future action in built environment education.
The aftermath of the conference intrigued the UIA Architecture and Children Work Programme research team to explore available literature on the subject matter and its underlying categories, asking further questions including: How can architecture be helpful as an educational tool? What are its benefits to school education? What are the methods and tools to integrate architecture into education? The team intends to answer the preceding questions along several successive articles. Whilst in this article, we will explore the values of learning by doing and experiential learning directly from the built environment, out of the classroom limits and campus borders.
According to the Italian educator and psychologist Loris Malaguzzi, the built environment itself is an active educational agent. This implies a shift from a purely teacher-orientated model to one in which the environment itself contributes significantly to pedagogical outcomes. This concept challenges a collaboration between educators and architects to consider the built environment as an active participant in the educational process, rather than a passive vessel. Malagouzzi suggests that ‘space is a third teacher’ that empowers children and encourages their exploration and autonomous learning. This means that the built environment is not only structures and spaces that are merely functional. Rather, it exposes the children to the social situations and the cultural practices envisaged in these spaces, which in turn, helps define more transformative and progressive educational methods. This is what the pedagogical references coin as “situated learning”. This requires the children to participate in the activities taking place in the different components of the built environment, thus stimulating experiential learning. How? Through analysing precedents, critiquing spaces, buildings and landscapes, exploring the narratives behind them, comparing their inherent theoretical frameworks to their resultant physical appearances. This allows the children to go beyond abstract concepts, question assumptions, evaluate solutions and think systematically, and support essential skills for tackling complex challenges and hence cultivating critical thinking.
One more added value of architecture in education is the development of multiple senses (sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste) that evolve with the exploration of the built environment and which automatically contributes to a holistic understanding of spaces, buildings, landscapes and even the urban context. Sensory exploration of the built environment increases the children’s concentration and creativity by stimulating the children’s senses appropriately. This direct interaction with the built environment through site visits and guided walk-throughs allows for a deeper understanding and connection to architecture, which is a meaningful learning experience. Experiential learning of the built environment goes beyond passively receiving information inside the classrooms to actively engaging with the material world, promoting deeper understanding and remembering. Such processes immediately develop the children’s environmental perception. The principles of spatial awareness, design thinking and understanding the built environment are relevant valuable learning opportunities from early childhood to early adulthood. Learning directly from architecture and the built environment can be simply achieved through simple games and activities. Examples of architecture-related activities for primary school children include visiting local buildings and talking about their design features. Treasure hunting and scavenger hunts help in paving the way ahead of creating story scenes and engaging in role playing and have proven to be very effective activities in actual-true settings. For secondary school kids, exploring the history and social context of buildings, along with the site considerations, climatic factors, available building materials and techniques are foundations for building simple models for the young ones’ designed spaces, and/or adaptive reuse concepts of structures and spaces.
What we are highlighting here is the value of architecture as the “third teacher”, out of the classroom or school borders. This is what Kolb and Piaget termed as learning by doing. Site visits – for example, site visits are valuable for getting to know the architecture first-hand and learning from real-world examples. To conduct effective built environment education, it is recommended to observe details, consider the user experience and analyse the buildings in their live contexts. Visiting real architectural spaces and buildings provide invaluable experiential learning opportunities, allowing students to relate theoretical knowledge to real applications and to develop a deeper appreciation of the built environment. Direct interaction with buildings allows for multi-sensory engagement and a deeper understanding of design intent and impact.
Indeed, the value of architecture is significant and has the potential to transform education. However, more empirical research is needed where architects together with educators and policymakers are encouraged to recognise and exploit the power of architecture as an educational tool. Rethinking education through the lens of architecture, considering the city as an open textbook offers endless prospects to enhance learning, foster creativity and promote children’s well-being, ultimately shaping novel, more efficient and multi-modal educational models.
Keywords: Architecture and Education, Built Environment Learning, Experiential Learning, City as Classroom and Children’s Cognitive Development.
References
https://thevoiceofearlychildhood.com/early-childhood-pioneers/loris-malaguzzi/
https://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html
https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html
https://www.de-a-arhitectura.ro/project/de-a-arhitectura-at-home/