On the way to school

Client: Maison de l'architecture de Basse Normandie
Location: France
2012

About a children’s subjective map, storks and a roundabout

During our six-week residence in the village of Graignes-Mesnil Angot, we conducted ten workshops with the municipal school students, from kindergarten to 5th Grade, on the theme of “the way to school”.

This led to the creation of the ‘children’s map’, a montage of the students’ drawings, where the town appears as the meeting point of four roads around a roundabout, populated by domestic or wild animals and containing pink houses and hollow trees.

We also jointly built a giant model that represented the village, integrating the children’s houses and projects: a motocross racing circuit, a race-circuit-zoo, a stork sculpture and daycare for guinea pigs, an animal fountain, rainbow and garlands, a water park with vertiginous slides, play gardens and, watching over this colorful set, the articulated presence of a giant Father Christmas…

This work was presented to the whole village, city council and mayor during a festive evening event. The aim of this activity was to promote a sense of citizenship among the youngest members of the community and to raise politicians’ awareness of children’s specific urban development needs. Indeed, many newcomers to this rural town are young couples with small children, who find few adapted facilities as the town has been more used to catering for a predominantly aged population.