Architecture for Children Education Program by Vicky Chan

---

DI: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?

VC : Children inspire us to look at our built environment in the most innocent way.

DI: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?

VC : We want children to learn about green cities and green buildings.

DI: What are your future plans for this award winning design?

VC : We will convince more schools and more children to learn about our volunteer programs and expand our base of volunteers.

DI: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?

VC : We teach every week for the last 14 years.

DI: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?

VC : It is all volunteer work we do to make the world a better place.

DI: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?

VC : We worked with schools and they are sharing our concepts to other schools and parents.

DI: What made you design this particular type of work?

VC : We have to make subject interesting to engage our children. Just talking about green design is not exactly exciting.

DI: Where there any other designs and/or designers that helped the influence the design of your work?

VC : We look at ecology and science classes a lot and see how they explain a scientific concept with experiments.

DI: Who is the target customer for his design?

VC : Children who is 12 year old or younger.

DI: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts?

VC : We do it for free and we build from trash. Zero investment with lots of returns.

DI: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?

VC : Architecture for Children is clear and straight forward.

DI: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?

VC : Hand sketch mostly with digital presentation

DI: What is the most unique aspect of your design?

VC : We build using recycled materials to learn about sustainable design.

DI: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?

VC : We collaborate with lots of volunteers from the fields of advertising, art, architecture, math, computer science, engineering and library science.

DI: What is the role of technology in this particular design?

VC : We use solar panels and wind turbine in some of the exercise to explain the current technology in renewable energy.

DI: Is your design influenced by data or analytical research in any way? What kind of research did you conduct for making this design?

VC : Yes. It is all driven by science, history and technology.

DI: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept?

VC : Some children listened to too much talk about maximizing footage and money in architecture. It takes time to train them about social spaces, parks and area for nature.

DI: How did you decide to submit your design to an international design competition?

VC : We want more people to collaborate with us globally. We are currently in New York and Hong Kong.

DI: What did you learn or how did you improve yourself during the designing of this work?

VC : Children has very short attention span. We have to keep the topic clear and straightforward. No big words and complicated concept. Luckily, most ideas we have is science that they have learned in other classes.

DI: Any other things you would like to cover that have not been covered in these questions?

VC : It is important to tell people that volunteering is important. It is not about the money but about making the world into a better place.