When children order architecture, the results will be unexpected and fantastic. In the exhibition Building Blocks the children are the bosses. 

The exhibition’s amazing rooms in full size invite the public to investigate every nook and cranny.  Building Blocks voices the children’s ideas concretely, physically as built space. What happens when children and youngsters work with architects to shape their ideas?

Six groups of children and teenagers from 8 to 16, from Bergen, Trondheim and Oslo get architects to work with. Together they create sketches that the architects turn into drawings for the buildings to be put up at DogA, The Norwegian Design and Architecture Centre in Oslo autumn 2011.

Empower weak voices

Children and teenagers are groups that often lose in the struggle to be heard when their near environment is being planning.  Children do not own plots or have to be notified of property developments.  They are seldom invited to hearings and are entirely dependent on adults speaking up for them and asking what they think when schools, roads and parks are to be constructed. 

Children do not engage construction companies. But in Building Blocks children are the employers.  The exhibition tests the ability of the architects to visualise the children’s ideas and thus give them a voice in construction matters.

Read more about the exhibition Building Blocks on Färgfabrikken’s web page.  

Building Blocks is arranged by Norwegian Design (Norsk Form) in cooperation with Färgfabrikken Stockholm after an original idea of Färgfabriken and Medium. The exhibition was first shown in Färgfabriken in 2010.