Architecture for kids podcast with Pihla Meskanen Co-founder of Arkki School of Architecture for Children and Youth in Finland, and founder and CEO of Arkki International

I´m excited to be part of the podcast series, and to discuss how Architecture Education supports children to develop the essential skills and competencies necessary for today's society!

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

you

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

Hello and welcome to another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast. I'm your host, António Cablón. I'm a trained architect, an architectural educator and founding director of award-winning Architecture for Kids CIC. In this podcast, I'm going to talk to practitioners and creatives that share the same passion as I do, to inspire and to engage children and young people to shape their built environment and the creative industries. The podcast is brought to you in collaboration with the Built Environment Trust, the Thornton Education Trust, and the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. My guest today is Pirle Meskenin. Pirle is an architect, pedagogy, co-founder of Archi School of Architecture for Children and Youth in Finland, and founder and CEO of Archi International that has licensed the Archi concept worldwide to 10 countries. To acknowledge her work in the field of Creative Education, Pirla has received the Honor of the Night First Class of the Order of the Lion of Finland 2018, the Asko Evonius Prize 2018, the Pietla Prize 2004, the Children's Cultural State Award in 2005 and Chosen Art Educator of the Year 2013. Pirla, thank you for talking to me today and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 1:39

It's great to be here, it's my pleasure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41

What subjects were you good at school and what subjects did you enjoy most if they were different?

SPEAKER_00: 1:46

I enjoyed a lot of subjects. My favorite were art and theater. I was in the school theater club. I was also writing the school magazine in the old times with typewriters and my extracurricular hobbies were piano and flute. I was doing gymnastics. We had several silver medals in the rhythmic gymnastics with my group. I was also interested in all the school traditional subjects as well. My dad helped me with math. I founded quite interesting and also physics although I had this problem of understanding that why are we learning physics and chemistry because I didn't quite see the point when I was in school. Later on I understood why we are learning it but I also thought afterwards that this is something that we should concentrate in the school to understand why we are learning what we are learning. Basically I was a good student in the school. You became an architect. How did it happen? There is no exact point when I decided. I was hoping to be many things. I dreamed of being a psychologist Then I even tried to get into the university to study psychology, but actually I went in for the examination on the wrong date. One day after the exams were held, that changed my plan afterwards. And then I went to study some languages in the university. And then I was thinking that, what do I really want? Then I thought that, okay, I want to be an interior designer or a designer or architect. And then I just happened to get in to study architecture, but I could have studied interior architecture design as well. Of course, I can say that I have influence from home as my mom is an architect, but I didn't think of this profession because she was an architect as well.

SPEAKER_01: 3:19

As a student of architecture, what did you think about the course when you were studying?

SPEAKER_00: 3:23

When I got into the university and started the studies of architecture, it was so fantastic because it was totally different than what I had thought of. And it was cross-disciplinary and it was combining so many things. Also the psychology, which I was really fond of, and art and all the analytical subjects as well. Really so happy to be there. And after that, I never thought that I would become anything else. But before that, I had no idea what it would be like. It was just one choice among the others.

SPEAKER_01: 3:48

How did you move on to pedagogy once you graduated from architecture? Was that one thing straight after the other or what was that process?

SPEAKER_00: 3:57

Actually, I was only in the second year of my architectural studies when my mother was commissioned by the National Board of Education here in Finland to write the first national curriculum for basic education in architecture, which means that it's an after-school curriculum, but it's also so governed by the National Board of Education. She was writing these guidelines and they were finished in 1993. And then my mom asked me and my fellow architecture student, Miina Vuorinen, that if we would be interested in starting an architecture school for children. And I've always been enthusiastic about everything. So I said, yes, of course, that sounds really fantastic and great. And let's do that. That's how we started. I just had only two years of architectural studies. I actually did the pedagogical studies at the same time that I studied, finished my master's in architecture and I graduated from both at the

SPEAKER_01: 4:47

same time. This is how the Arki School of Architecture for Children and Youth in Finland started.

SPEAKER_00: 4:52

Yes, that's how it started. My mother is an architect and also she's been really interested in different pedagogies. She brought Montessori to Finland in the 80s and Reggio Emilia pedagogy in the 90s and as a teenager I was working my summer jobs in the kindergartens that my mom was running and she also had an architecture kindergarten for children. I was exposed to quite a lot of education educational, pedagogical thinking also growing up. Then now I can combine all this in my present

SPEAKER_01: 5:19

work. Tell us about the Arki School of Architecture for Children and Youth in Finland. What is the ethos? What are the programs? And how have things developed since you started? Well, until now, now it's an international school. But do you want to talk to us about it?

SPEAKER_00: 5:33

Arki was founded in 1993 on the same year when this national curriculum was published. And we have a national curriculum in Finland for after school activities such as music, dance, theater, visual arts, and for a long time. But in 1993, architecture was added to be one of the arts. Founded the school Arki with my mother Tuuli Tiitola-Meskanen and my colleague Miina Vuorinen. And we started with the age groups of 7 to 9 and 10 to 12. It's after-school education, the national curriculum after school. It's giving guidelines to the architecture education as an after-school activity and not within the basic curriculum. And we started to explore what kind architecture education could be to different age groups. And basically year after year, we got more and more children interested. We expand double every year. And then after a few years, we included also the age groups of four to six and later on above 12. Now our kids covering all the ages from four to 19, which is the age when high school finishes here in Finland. The kids who are interested in architecture, they can pursue this opportunity to have architecture as their hobby throughout their whole school years. The government is supporting Arki's foundation in Finland. The government and the cities where we have education, the cities are also supporting the program. So the families are paying less, but nonetheless, all the programs have a fee for

SPEAKER_01: 6:57

the pupils. Can you tell us about the programs? What do they entail? And I suppose they're quite varied because of the different age groups. Maybe we could start with the little one.

SPEAKER_00: 7:06

With the youngest pupils that are in the kindergarten age, we start with the close environments that is closest to them, home and kindergarten and the way from home to kindergarten and what is close to them, the playground, that they start to discover, build environments around them. And the program is also addressing different concepts of architecture and the different basic elements of architecture like light and shadow and forms and masses and these basic things that are important things in the designing of architecture as well. And we like to do projects with the younger children that are concentrating on one topic at a time so that they can experiment and understand the meaning of how each element is affecting, for example, the feeling of the space or the perception of the space. And we also stress the importance that architecture is a multisensory experience. It's not only something visual, but we discover the world with the different senses. And when the pupils are older, then we combine different aspects of architecture together in the project, and then they can do more complex projects studying architecture and the environment.

SPEAKER_01: 8:21

You talked about the alignment with the curriculum, but the curriculum that you talk about is the after-school curriculum. Do you want to tell us the difference between the two curricula, to clarify?

SPEAKER_00: 8:30

All the schools in Finland are following the national core curriculum of basic education. There are very few private schools in Finland, and all the schools follow one national curriculum. And then there is the other curriculum which we are following which is the after school curriculum and it's called the basic national core curriculum of basic education in arts and how they are related to each other is that both of the curriculums are of course age related also when we design architecture education programs in our after school we design them so that they are related to the national curriculums they are addressing the similar topics that are inside the actual curriculum that the children are studying in the daytime and one is example is, of course, like geometry, geometric forms, two-dimensional forms, three-dimensional forms, which are part of all curriculums around the world. Of course, we can easily see here the relationship that these topics can also be related through architecture to math and combined and the children can see and peel and understand and experiment that how these concepts and things are related to real life and the built environment.

SPEAKER_01: 9:38

Does ArchiSchool operate in one area in Finland or Does it reach to the remote areas? How does that work? And is it hands-on programs or is something that you roll out in videos and online programs? How do you reach to all children in Finland?

SPEAKER_00: 9:55

Our program is mainly based on the concept that the teachers who facilitate children, that they are architects or architecture students by profession. The whole thing is built around teamwork. Group size is around 12 pupils, which we find that that's a good size for conversation good size for listening, for presenting in a secure environment and teamwork. We train the architects in the pedagogical approach, how to facilitate children through the project. And then we can send the architects to the schools here in, for example, Helsinki area or another city. And we also offer these afterschool activities inside our own centers, which we have in three cities in Finland. And how we then expanded, I don't know if we go to the international point already.

SPEAKER_01: 10:41

That's that I was going next. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 10:44

So how we expanded internationally then happened that several people from around the world started contacting us here in Finland and they would ask like how could they get this in their own country as well. And we were quite perplexed. We didn't know how it could be transferred to another place or after several years then we decided that licensing the program and training the architect in different countries would probably work in a way that we could ensure that the program doesn't change and the same quality and the ingredients and what we think works would be able to be transferred to different countries as well.

SPEAKER_01: 11:19

It's about teaching teachers how to work with architecture. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00: 11:22

We have developed several programs starting from 1994. The biggest program is the step-by-step program of 15 years. And that program consists of 1,200 hours of project-based curriculum. There is 120 different projects and each project is documented and contains a guideline how you do this experimentation or challenge with pupils. And it contains also pedagogical guidelines, aims, how to assess it, what kind of things are important, what kind of themes from the curriculum are included in this specific project. We have like a project library, which is containing all the projects for different age groups. Then we have also developed what we call theme courses. And these are courses that the children can join in seasonal holiday time. These courses are different from the very long step-by-step curriculums. These are one week long, around 30-hour courses, and these are specific to some topics. So they might be about urban planning, or they might be about product design, or about interior design. So we have these kind of short theme courses. And then also in Finland, we started working together with kindergartens and schools, or we would do some projects that are related to them. They are related to programs that are run by the different cities. The cities want the schools to go to the museum and do different type of collaboration with outside the school we are doing that kind of program and then the four different type of program is participatory design programs which we started to develop here in Finland like 15 years ago and that was related to the new building act and building law that was issued in 2001 in Finland which stated that all citizens in Finland should be able to participate in designing their own future environment And some of the cities wanted to start to develop also how to involve children in these processes. We have been like the architects who work at ARKI have been the intermediators between the office city planners and the children and running these projects to get the opinions of the children heard in the office as well. So for example, with Helsinki City, we have executed around 14 different types of participatory projects, ranging from the children being judges in a competition to actually the children making a competition entry and designing courtyards or such different things. What is the impact

SPEAKER_01: 13:48

on the built environment as well as on the show by engaging in the shaping of the built environment in such a way as well as from a young age?

SPEAKER_00: 13:56

There is quite many different types of impacts and I think one impact is that the children come to see the decision-making process and the design process and also to get acquainted with the different parties that are involved in these very complex processes and they Another aspect is that the children are able to deliver some opinions and also feel and see that their opinions are heard, which is then a very different process of being able to really participate and be part of the society, even though being a younger age. There's also an impact to the children's parents because maybe they have never thought about how the built environment is done, who makes the decisions, how the process is going. So we've seen quite an interesting impact on the parents as well because they seem to get quite interested in these planning processes as well even though previously maybe it didn't come to their mind that there is such long processes and complex things behind the decisions how our environment is built and then I think one impact is of course that the children get this feeling of empowerment and feeling of importance and they feel good that they can achieve something which is giving their opinions in this case. And on the built

SPEAKER_01: 15:07

environment what is that impact?

SPEAKER_00: 15:09

In many cases the children have been able to see when the built environment is built. At the end of the process, they can see that some of the concepts or some of the ideas are visible in the end result. And I have to say that urban planning and these kinds of processes are quite long. They have to wait for many years. It's not like you see something tomorrow or next week. And also, I think what is important to understand in the participatory processes, which are on the level of urban planning, that it's not that every single opinion is there to be visible at the end but you can see some concepts probably that could be there at the end as well

SPEAKER_01: 15:45

because it's a huge teamwork. That will lead to the next question which is how do you juggle or how do you balance that relationship between the expert, the designers and the urban planners with the children's opinions? How does that relationship

SPEAKER_00: 15:59

work

SPEAKER_01: 15:59

in this participatory design approach?

SPEAKER_00: 16:01

We have found it very smooth that the architects who work at Archean are used to working together with children. They are the ones who communicate and work with the And then we can together deliver the ideas to the officials. I think there are several reasons. One is, of course, the lack of time of the people who are working at the office. They probably don't have so much time to spend in participating or listening to the children. And I think that it's not very effective if you think that listening to children would be just going and interviewing somebody for five minutes. In my opinion, it's a long process to involve the children. So at least five days would be enough. minimum to understand what is their opinion about the specific city planning question, for example, or an issue what they are giving opinions to. And how we would do it is that we would first concentrate on discussing together the language of urban planning, for example, if we're talking about urban planning, discussing and discovering together a language, how we can communicate. Because if we just ask the children, they don't have probably their expressions, how to say what they think. We first communicate what are all the aspects that are considered in the urban planning and then we develop bit by bit their understanding on these different aspects and then after that we continue on the part where they consider all these aspects that they have learned and then they are able to give an opinion how these different aspects could be changed by their opinion or how they feel about these different things.

SPEAKER_01: 17:33

Is there a particular project that comes to mind where you worked involving children that materialized and why it became so important to you?

SPEAKER_00: 17:42

Our first really huge project was in Finland, an area called Hermissaari. We involved 100 children in that project, starting from 4-year-old all the way to 16-year-old. And we did this because we wanted to understand how all these different age groups were able to understand the different scales and how they were able to understand such complex questions and what would their opinions be on the housing area for 5,000 people in this case. It was a very successful project. It lasted for 6 months and took 150 hours. It was not a small project and we learned quite a lot. And now we have been able, through ARC International, we have been able to replicate, develop this way of involving children. And we have done the same thing in Thailand, for example, and Vietnam. And in Ho Chi Minh City, we involved 300 children in planning one specific area in the city center. And after this one week process, they were able to communicate to the urban planners and ARC of the city, how they feel would be important to develop the city so that it would be sustainable, it would be pleasant for the youth, for different users, inclusive. And we received the UNICEF Prize Award of Child-Friendly Cities for this project.

SPEAKER_01: 18:56

Congratulations. We have finally happening in the UK. Partyfest has become the first child-friendly city with UNICEF standards, ARC International. How does it work, that process of, I don't know if adapting would be the right word, moving to your program to a country of a completely different culture in a completely different climate and how does that work? It's

SPEAKER_00: 19:19

been really interesting to see how we can transfer the concept to different countries and there has every time there has been the question that should we adapt and how much should we adapt and would it be very different in different places but actually because we are dealing with the basic concepts of architecture the basic concepts of design and the very core of architecture design and urban planning and history and all these subjects we actually don't need to change the project we can change very small things like if we talk about one big subject which is traditional building every city and every country has a concept of traditional buildings of course we can adapt a little bit to study for example the traditional building of that area but the main concept is the same and also architectural experience is the same we experience architecture with our body and mind and Everything in the very core of it, it's same. But then maybe the small details of history and climate, they are different. But also in our program, we teach the children about all cultures and history of different types of architecture. We already try to include different types of concepts in the curriculum or in the program or in the project. So it doesn't really matter where you are in the world. You can still learn about different cultures and their traditions as well.

SPEAKER_01: 20:38

In terms of the architectural profession itself, how do you see it? think that the work you do with Archi or the approach that Finland has is influencing the profession?

SPEAKER_00: 20:47

I think everywhere in the world, there has been the similar fraidness among the architects that, okay, is it, how do we do this? How do we involve the citizens in the planning process? That's something that happens in the architect's mind. And then there's another thing of really doing it. I think that after doing the process, I think everybody sees that there is very reasonable results that why we do this participation. processes, but there are so many ways to do it. And I always want to say that it's no design processes so that everybody gets what they want, but all the processes are huge processes with many stakeholders, many people, many opinions. And it's also a very good thing to learn that it's not that even the architect always gets what they want. That same thing that we all can learn that these processes involve a lot of different parties and a lot of different levels and decision makers. And I think if you you ask the opinion that how do architects feel I have this experience that generally they are quite astonished and happy that oh wow that is it possible that children are talking about such important and deep things because usually they are quite concerned about sustainability and preserving the nature and making the city more walkable and making less pollution and more greenery for example they are actually addressing all the same things as architects we are addressing in our jobs like actually like talking to appear. It's not so scary as it sounds. A

SPEAKER_01: 22:14

mini architect, depending on the height, from the children you worked with. Is there some that get passionate interest to study architecture that actually followed through? Is that one of your motives as well? Or the main interest, get people interested in the built environment?

SPEAKER_00: 22:30

Yes, our mission is not to grow little architects or big architects, but to provide everybody with citizenship skills, creative skills, understanding of the built environment. For example, in Finland, we have had like 25,000 pupils in our programs and we don't have an exact number but around 100 have become architects a really minimal promille of the pupils that we reach it's just something that happens and maybe even more that those people who already would know that they want to become architects they would join the program and then get enforcement of something that they want to pursue but generally I see very good results that it's necessary for all the children to take part and we have got really interesting feedback from the teachers if we have big school groups and the teachers see the difference between and after they really can see that it affects their creativity in different fields of life not only because in school it's not so important that if you are good in art or architecture but they generally the teachers say that the children have developed this kind of innovative thinking skills so that they find more solutions to some other things that they are doing in the schools that they are more resourceful they can can combine cross-disciplinary subjects. They can get new ideas more easily. They are not so afraid to present strange or new ideas or different ideas. And they get a lot of different type of soft skills through these creative programs, I would say.

SPEAKER_01: 23:56

A benefit to the curriculum itself, it improves their academic progress and achievement as well as interest by engaging in these programs that you

SPEAKER_00: 24:04

offer. I believe that architecture, because it's intrinsically, it's multidisciplinary. It's already combining two technology and art and many different subjects helping everybody who is doing architectural projects or challenges or thinking about these questions helping them to combine technological and analytical knowledge with the creative knowledge so it's actually like building connections inside the brain so it's connecting different parts of the brain with enforcing the neuro system and this is not specific to any subjects can use this connection between the different parts of the brain you can just use it any field of life really helping them to see the the world in different eyes. Like one of our students says at the 12 years old, she said that, oh, being here at ARKI program really has opened my eyes. I see everything differently now. At that time, I felt like really happy that maybe I had achieved something.

SPEAKER_01: 24:54

Absolutely. That sums it all. What is next in terms of plans for ARKI or ARKI International School?

SPEAKER_00: 25:01

I think what is quite interesting that what we are doing now in many countries is that we are discussing with the National Board of Education or Board of Education of the For example, in Ho Chi Minh City, we have been doing a pilot in secondary school. And next year or this year, we will be already starting inside 200 schools. The results have been interesting that the board education in Ho Chi Minh City wants to include our program into so many schools to give all these children the chance to develop their creativity. And developing the creativity is in this case happening through architecture and design project-based learning. And also in Thailand, we are doing a pilot training teachers how to change the way of teaching inside the school from the old-fashioned memorizing everything to more child-centered, more active, more multidisciplinary way of learning. We have programs that we have also looked at the national curriculum in Thailand. We have also shown the teachers how we can combine the ARCI projects to the actual curriculum that they have to teach and how they can teach what they need to do in the school in a more inspiring and more child-centered and active and hands-on way. In how many countries is archiving? Besides Finland, we have now 10 countries. Four of them are in Asia and three in Europe and in Turkey. Is there a question

SPEAKER_01: 26:22

I should have asked you that I haven't asked you? And what is that question?

SPEAKER_00: 26:25

I think it's important to discuss. For me, it's important to discuss that why is architecture education meaningful to everybody? Not only thinking about the side that some pupils would like to become architects in the future. And it's, of course, important to part But I think that we could discuss about this wider effect that architecture education can have to all pupils or children. And it doesn't depend on the age. I think it's really a way to take the STEAM education in the next level because the STEAM traditionally is about using art as a medium. But if we use architecture, it's so much more complex and we can combine so many different subjects, different subjects from science and technology, engineering, art and math. but also from social sciences and humanities. Through architecture, it's really possible to build complex, multidisciplinary and creative challenges that are really beneficial in the development of the future skills, the 21st century skills or the transversal skills, however you want to call them. I see a huge possibility looking at this from that angle. I wanted to talk about the transversal skills because I think that's really important. Everywhere around the world, it's a subject that the schools are trying trying to include because the traditional school subjects are not enough. The world is changing so fast that everybody wants to focus on these transversal skills and I think architecture education is one key element that could help in that. I can mention just to you this research that we were part of in Finland in 2018 and 2019 that was done by the University of Helsinki and University of Turku and the brain researchers got amazing result from a six-month project that our key teachers were going into the school one time a week for two hours and working together with the professional teacher of fourth grader. They actually found out that in this six months and two hours a week affected the pupils so that their collaboration skills increased and they improved their social skills and significantly it affected their emotional recognition skills which was quite interesting because actually we are just focusing on the teamwork and collaboration but it also helped them to develop their emotional recognition skills and of course creativity and these kind of skills also were impacted but I think that this one emotional skills impact was really interesting. I'd like to compliment you for making the series and it's been really interesting to listen to other podcasts as well and I think it's great that there is international exchange of ideas and possible to hear about others' work so I think it's very

SPEAKER_01: 29:00

valuable work. Thank you very much to my guests today, to all the listeners and please subscribe to Architecture for Kids podcast and leave your rating and the review, recommend us to your friends and family, and to find out more about it, visit our websites, antoniocaplan-portfolio.co.uk, buildingcenter.co.uk, thorntoneducationtrust.org, cardiff.ac.uk, and follow us on Instagram, archforkidscic, Twitter, antcaplan, LinkedIn, antcaplan, C-A-P-E-L-A-N. and please join me again next week for another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast brought to you in collaboration with the Build Environment Trust the Thornton Education Trust and the Welsh School of Architecture Cardiff University