RALPH ERSKINE, PEDAGOGICAL ARCHITECTURE. THREE CONJUNCTIONS IN THE WORK OF THE ANGLO-SWEDISH ARCHITECT THAT INVOLVE CHILDREN IN THE DESIGN PROCESS

Abstract

Ralph Erskine belongs to the group of architects who understand the generation of the architectural project as a pedagogical and political process that helps to shape society at the same time as it configures a space. For this reason, his proposals, in addition to paying attention to function and planning, show a great willingness to consider new ideas and to incorporate the context, by including the participation of the user from different perspectives as a necessary process to achieve valid and consensual architecture. From among his work, three examples are selected that offer a leading role to children on three different scales of action: public space, specific space, and collective space. In turn, examples are provided through three different modes of participation or roles: through, for, and with children. This cross methodology helps us to analyse the contribution that the child’svisual appreciation or action has offered both to planning and to the project strategies or the way of developing architecture architecture as developed by the Anglo-Swedish architect’s work team in the form of the memorial monument “The Unknown Political Prisoner” of 1953. This project was designed together with E.M. Nielsen as a public space that reverses the concept of the monument through children’s action. In the Gyttorp School of 1961, he explores in depth not only what a learning space for children should be and what it can contribute to a community, but also the participatory process carried out in the remodelling of the Byker neighbourhood, where children’s input nuanced various decisions, mainly in relation to the collective space.