Draft:Architectural Thinking School for Children

The Architectural Thinking School for Children, often referred to as the Bauhaus for сhildren, is a think tank composed of children and an interdisciplinary team of professionals. It operates at the intersection of experimental pedagogy and a wide range of disciplines, using architectural thinking as a tool to promote children as full-fledged participants in the intellectual and artistic adult world.

The school was founded in 2016 in Minsk by architect Alexander Novikov and art historian and designer Elena Karpilova as an institution of supplementary education with an innovative approach to teaching. In 2022, due to the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the school relocated to Portugal and now and works in Lisbon with children aged 5 to 15, the majority of whom are migrants.

The Architectural Thinking School for Children teaches architectural thinking as a tool for understanding the modern global world. ''We took the architect's work as a model, since they possess a huge range of knowledge and skills: they are good at conducting research, using knowledge from completely different disciplines, creating projects, and presenting them to the public. The systems thinking possessed by a professional architect is what we call architectural thinking.''

Curriculum
The school has more than 16 studios: architecture, contemporary art, sculpture, object design, journalism, graphic design, psychology, biology, sociology, political science, economics, etc. Classes relating to all of the studios take place within one common, interdisciplinary program of study and are conducted by expert practitioners in the relevant fields.

The school program is designed for 7 years of study and is organized in accordance with the principle of "one year, one course". School courses: "Development", "Systems Thinking", "Interdisciplinarity-1, 2", "City Research", and "Professions-1, 2". Each course is divided into four quarters. During each of the quarters, the student completes classes in different studios and, in the end, creates one final project: a book, a film, a map of the city, etc.

Bambini Ovunque - Children Everywhere for Venice Art Biennale 2024
A group of children publicly showcased their newly designed street games as part of the 0+ Happening during the pre-opening of the Venice Art Biennale 2024 on April 17, 18, and 19. The happening was preceded by a research and design program that focuses on street games, exploring them as a generic language understood by all.

Children Everywhere is an art and research project conducted by children and an interdisciplinary team of professionals, exploring the concept of childhood foreignness. Its main goal is to shed light on and examine the obstacles encountered by children in today's society, providing them with a platform to express their experiences and concerns artistically.

It is a project bringing together immigrants, children from Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, Russia, whose families left their countries because of the war in Ukraine, who are now scattered around the world waiting for residence permits and don’t know what their final destination will be next year.



HOUSEДОМДОМ: A book of children's projects and other avant-garde architecture
HOUSEDOMDOM is the world's first book where children's architectural projects are placed alongside professional avant-garde works. You will encounter revolutionary ideas from avant-garde architects, and read about how and why they once wanted to change our world. And also you will see equally original ideas from students of the Architectural Thinking School, and learn how they perceive the world today and how they imagine the future of humanity.



Minsk Eye Interactive Map
A city is houses and streets, its residents and their relationships, plants and birds, and even our dreams about it. A city is a whole world that we will show and explain to you.

7-12 years old students under the guidance of professional experts examined Minsk through the lens of a large number of individual disciplines: architecture, various types of art, sociology, political science, economics, psychology, biology, cooking, etc. The results of the study were collated and presented in the form of an interactive map.

The map consists of three layers: Minsk of the Present, where the students reflected the most objective data about the city today; Minsk of the Future (2067), where students created their projects based on their own speculations of the future; Dreams of Minsk, a kind of parallel Minsk that can be seen in night fantasies of its residents.

Exhibitions

 * House in the Zair Azgur Museum (Minsk, 2016)
 * ХII National Architecture Festival (Minsk, 2017)
 * Architectural Thinking School Exhibition of Projects (Minsk, 2017)
 * Minsk Urbanism Festival (Minsk, 2018)
 * Architectural Thinking School Exhibition of Projects in the Art Space (Minsk, 2018)
 * Architectural Thinking School Exhibition of Projects in the Art Belarus Gallery (Minsk, 2019)
 * Architectural Thinking School Exhibition of Projects in the Vershy Gallery (Minsk, 2020)


 * I Children Biennale at the National Centre for Contemporary Arts. (Minsk, 2021)
 * House/Дом/Casa in Lisbon Architecture Triennale (Lisbon, 2022)
 * Architectural Thinking School Exhibition of Projects in the Museum of Contemporary Art MAC/CCB (Lisbon, 2023)

Professionals of the Architectural Thinking School
This table lists professionals who have collaborated with the Architectural Thinking School as tutors.

Collaborations

 * Сreative service CreateMe (Minsk, 2017)
 * FSP (Minsk, 2017)
 * Future Architecture Platform (Ljubljana, 2017)
 * Future Architecture Summer School (Graz, 2017)
 * BINA Belgrade International Architecture Week (Belgrade, 2017)
 * dpr-barcelona (2018)
 * Future Architecture Platform (Ljubljana, 2018)
 * Arkki (Helsinki, 2019)
 * BILDING Art and Architecture School (Innsbruck, 2020)
 * Architecture Foundation (London, 2020)
 * Dekabristen (Berlin, 2020)
 * National Plan for the Arts (Ministry of Education of Portugal, Ministry of Culture of Portugal) and Lisbon Architecture Triennale (Lisbon, 2021)
 * Lisbon Architecture Triennale (Lisbon, 2021)
 * Architecture Centre Garagem Sul (Lisbon, 2022)
 * Belem Cultural Center CCB (Lisbon, 2023)
 * Museum of Contemporary Art MAC/CCB (Lisbon, 2024)