Designers Learn to Shape Buildings at an Early Age

Noah Freeman designs buildings that fly.

He also designs underwater buildings and buildings that switch backward or forward in time.

And what’s more, architect Freeman is only 4 1/2-years old.

Actually, he’s not really a practicing architect like Cesar Pelli or Charles Luckman.

Noah is a student of architecture attending the Vitruvius program at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Santa Monica. The Vitruvius program, named after the first-century (B.C.) Roman architect, serves children from Noah’s age up to about 12. It was developed by Kathleen Kupper, a graduate architect and preschool instructor.

“I’m not teaching kids to be architects,” she says. “My purpose is to build self-esteem and encourage creative problem-solving by using architecture as a tool.”

Classes, limited to eight to 10 students, are noncompetitive, and the children are encouraged to enthuse over each other’s work.

Noah’s parents, Josh and Nicki Freeman, say Noah looks forward to the one-hour, three-times-a-week classes. Upon leaving, he bubbles with delight for hours over his architectural accomplishments.

Kupper says classes often start with story-telling, designed to lead to the kind of problems the children will solve. Then the children work at their projects using building blocks, paper, Styrofoam and other materials.

They learn to first make a drawing and then a model of their idea, and afterward, tell a story about it.

Only about a third of the students are girls.

“Maybe some parents don’t think of architecture as something girls would be interested in,” Kupper says, “But girls love it just as much as boys.”

One of Noah’s favorite projects was the creation of a time-machine building, whose rooms went back and forth between the past and the future.

He also designed an underwater city.

Not content with these triumphs, Noah then designed high-rises that would move on pulleys or float away on helium balloons.

“How many of Pelli’s or Luckman’s high-rises can do that?” asks Noah’s proud father.