Great Architecture is Child’s Play

Jim Coplien Big Kid

Architecture gives us…

Firmitas (structure firmness)

Utilitas (usefulness or commodity)

Venustas (beauty or delight)

The Problem

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

Design has given way to engineeringCreativity 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

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”

What is a Child?

4 months old: Surfaces move together

if connected and separately otherwiseGravity and inertia,

6 to 8 monthsCausality develops starting at 6 months but is available

at 12 months

Birth - 2 months: living “in time”3 months old:

3D objects are cohesive as they move

!

!

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”

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?

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

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, 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.)

operational models

What is an operational model if not an algorithm, a procedure

for accomplishing a goal?

We feel that a child is a "verb" rather than a "noun", an actor rather than an object; he is not a scaled-up pigeon or rat; he is trying to acquire a model of his surrounding environment in order to deal with it; his theories are "practical" notions of how to get from idea A to idea B rather than "consistent" branches of formal 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

We feel that a child is a "verb" rather than a "noun", an actor rather than an object; he is not a scaled-up pigeon or rat; he is trying to acquire a model of his surrounding environment in order to deal with it; his theories are "practical" notions of how to get from idea A to idea B rather than "consistent" branches of formal 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

We feel that a child is a "verb" rather than a "noun", an actor rather than an object; he is not a scaled-up pigeon or rat; he is trying to acquire a model of his surrounding environment in order to deal with it; his theories are "practical" notions of how to get from idea A to idea B rather than "consistent" branches of formal 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

Objects from Piaget? 1972:

In particular, it has been suggested that children are not sensitive to the need for empirical and logical consistency in their representations of the world. The findings of the study presented here do not support

this position.

However, “The Piagetian framework contained a hierarchical explanation of development with procedural memory

emerging during the first five sensorimotor sub-stages and declarative memory

beginning in the sixth and last sub-stage. Contemporary investigations of infant

memory have clearly demonstrated that the infant-toddler has the capacity for

declarative memory before their temporal system emerges in their language.

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

Method

Games

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

PlatoNo 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. . . .

Utilitas Firmitas Venustas

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 !!!)

!

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.

57

4 (e.g., “child process”)

23 (e.g., “child object”)

Mental Models, Time, Form & Language

Mental ModelConstructed 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

Play

–Mary Poppins

““In every job that must be done there is an element of fun You find the fun, and snap!

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).

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.

PlayArchitecture 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?

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))

Greek thought

Leisure (scholē)

Learning (paideia) )

Work

Play (paizein)

Symposia (drinking)

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

Games Meet Requirements

Architecture has nothing to do with requirements

Play is a meta-game

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

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

Child as Architect: Beyond Pavlovian programmed

LearningIt’s exploratory rather than methodological

… powerful application of operative mental models

… so we can focus on delivering what helps the end user

ConclusionLearning is play

Learning dynamics require reflective play

Dispense of the formal crap in architecture

Think playful exploration

Find the child in your end users