No. 111/2020

When museums present architecture, visitors are often drawn into participatory activities. Marta Brković Dodig has run many such hands-on activities for children and young people. She is employing scientific methods to examine the young research field of Built Environment Education. “Blockholm” is a classic example of BEE, Built Environment Educa- tion. In the exhibition at the National Centre for Architecture and Design in Sweden, children, young people and adults have recreated the city of Stockholmusing the computer gameMinecraft. More than 100,000 designs have been produced. A jury selected ten models which were then pre- sented on a scale of 1:5 in a follow-up exhibition. There are, or have been, similar events at museums in Chicago, Munich and Budapest. Together with her team, Marta Brković Dodig is collecting infor­ mation on BEE programmes around the world, how they differ, and how their success can be evaluated. But why should children acquire experience of town planning outside of school? “When it comes to urban planning and urban history, we want children to become informed citizens,” says Brković Dodig. Ultimately, it is all about democracy. “The city is the place where we live together. That’s why it’s important to be connected with it – with buildings and squares, with monuments, but also simply with places that are personally impor- tant to people.” Text RALF GRÖTKER DR MARTA BRKOVIĆ DODIG is an assistant professor of archi- tecture at Union – Nikola Tesla University in Belgrade, Serbia. She is currently a Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning at TU Berlin. WHY SHOULD CHILDREN BUILD A SKYSCRAPER IN A MUSEUM, MS BRKOVIĆ DODIG? Photo: Humboldt Foundation/Nikolaus Brade BRIEF ENQUIRIES 8 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 111/2020