by Gianluigi Mondaini
SOUxAncona – The School of Architecture for Boys and Girls was created as an educational and cultural project that views architecture not as a specialized discipline, but as an accessible, everyday language capable of offering tools for understanding, interpreting, and consciously transforming the space we live. The initiative is founded on the idea that educating about space means educating about the quality of collective life, instilling in children the ability to recognize beauty as a concrete, tangible, plural, and shared value. The initiative aims to offer a multidisciplinary educational experience that integrates architecture, design, art, and environmental education promoting the development of critical thinking, the need for social interaction, and the ability to work collaboratively through the Learning by Doing methodology.
Making with your hands. The space as a direct experience
The heart of the program consist of understanding space as a direct experience. Making things with your hands—building models, assembling materials, drawing, dismantling and reassembling—becomes a method of understanding and exploration. In this dimension, the child is not a spectator, but an active participant in a process that combines imagination, manual dexterity and critical reflection. Learning occurs through action, transforming practical experience into a stable and transferable cognitive tool.
A distinctive element of the approach is the interpretation of architectural design through the lens of game. Playing is not intended as an escape, but as a pedagogical tool capable of activating intuition, creativity, and relational skills in teamwork. Through playful and collaborative dynamics, architecture, places, and the city become objects of playing, an opportunity to understand the value of built space, the need for quality and the meaning of civic responsibility. Designing and playing act together as tools to stimulate the ability to observe, imagine, and critically intervene in the context, developing a critical and proactive attitude toward the city and its living spaces.
An intense workshop to understand the city through the design culture
The school is designed as a permanent laboratory where manual skills, thought and collective discussion converge. Activities are structured around brief theoretical introductions, followed by practical experiences, moments of feedback and dialogue, city tours and workshops with experts, creatives and designers. This framework allows for the recognition of beauty as a concrete, not abstract, quality, nurturing in children the ability to desire it, demand it and, gradually, produce it through conscious action.
The SOU – School of Architecture for Children – format was created by an idea of Andrea Bartoli and Florinda Saieva within the cultural regeneration experience of Farm Cultural Park in Favara, in the province of Agrigento (Sicily). SOUxAncona adheres to this national network, interpreting its principles in relation to the specific territorial characteristics of the Marche region and in synergy with the University’s scientific methods and research on game as a design tool. The Ancona school is promoted by architect Gianluigi Mondaini, full professor of Architectural and Urban Composition at the Polytechnic University of Marche, assisted by engineers Leonardo Moretti and Lorenzo Duranti and his research group Hub for Heritage and Habitat (H4HH), in collaboration with the Municipality of Ancona and with the contribution of numerous public and private partners in the area.
The working group is composed by teachers, researchers, PhD students, tutors, and experts from diverse fields—architecture, art, design, landscape studies and communication—who contribute to build a multidisciplinary educational environment. This diverse range of skills allows children to experience the complexity of design as a cultural and social practice, capable of entangling aesthetic, technical, and relational dimensions.
Autonomy, trust, belonging. Children are the main actors
The adopted methodologies emphasize active participation: creative workshops, collective planning, urban explorations, meetings with professionals and public discussions of the projects. Children are guided to observe the city, recognize its critical issues and potential, formulate hypotheses and develop alternative visions. In this process, the project is not an end in itself, but it is a tool for personal and civic growth, capable of strengthening autonomy, confidence and a sense of belonging to the community.
SOUxAncona acts with children from primary school to middle school and aims to be an inclusive educational space where making, designing, and playing converge in a single learning experience. Thus, architecture emerges as a living, daily, accessible experience capable of generating awareness and responsibility for the common good. Through manual labor, playing and collective discussion, young participants acquire tools to critically interpret the world and recognize the quality of space as an essential component of social life. In this intertwining of experience, imagination and citizenship the project becomes an ongoing educational practice, capable of laying the foundations for a future culture of beauty lived as a shared and concrete need.