Blog

By Lisa Ciota, Education Guide

Shapes. Materials. Ornamentation. These are the basics … the details … the richness of architecture. It’s what we talk about with young children during the education department’s Building Blocks of Architecture tour. Designed for students in Kindergarten through third grade, this tour is

• Short – just three stops,
• Simple – covering shapes, materials and ornamentation, and
• Immersive – as we observe, draw, and touch.

On this tour, education guides engage children’s minds and hands by equipping them with clipboards, worksheets, pencils, crayons, and art supplies. The tour begins with a short orientation before crossing to the north side of Wacker Drive. Here we focus on shapes—squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles—identifying and drawing the shapes we see. You’d be amazed at how many shapes the children see and how quickly they embrace the opportunity to draw.

After this, we cross the river to Pioneer Court to talk about materials. The conversation starts with the DuSable Bridge and how metal is strong enough to hold two levels of traffic! Once across the bridge, our first stop is to touch (and sometimes climb) the limestone bridge house and talk about Fraser’s bas-relief The Discovers. We pass the bronze bust of Jean Bapiste DuSable and make our way to the Apple Store to compare and contrast the Apple Store’s glass walls and wooden eaves with the anodized aluminum columns and beams of the 401 N. Michigan Avenue (Equitable) building.

Ornamentation is the last building block of architecture discussed on the tour. Many education guides cross Pioneer Court to closely examine the Tribune Tower, while others cross Michigan Avenue to see the Wrigley Building. Here we talk about the patterns and ornamentation on each building and how these can inspire feelings and stories.

Now it’s time for the kids’ creativity to flow. Flipping to the last worksheet, we break out the art supplies—crayons, stamps, rubbing mats—and ask the children to draw their own building and imagine how they would ornament that building. Some kids draw elaborate skylines while others simply enjoy making patterns with the rubbing mats and stamps.

For education guides, the Building Blocks tour is like laying a cornerstone for the love of buildings and architecture in young people’s hearts.