Reading Glassie's Folk Housing in Middle Virginia using Fröbel's Kindergarten Gift

This week, two classes I am taking this semester converged in interesting ways. In Constructionism our task was to explore one of Fröbel's gifts. My gift was number 6, a square shaped box containing wooden blocks that can be explored through various spatial and pattern arrangments. Gift 6 is an extension of Gift 4 and 5, which all represent simple play things that are intended to foster a child's creativity. The solid parts teach relativity, metamorphosis, and unity: as the child assembles different shapes out of the parts, she notices that various formations can be created our of the same building blocks (Brosterman, 1997).

For my Material Culture course we are reading one book each week. This week, we read Henry Glassie's work on Folk Housing in Middle Virginia, in which he is presenting a structural analysis of architectural structures. In short, Glassie is drawing on semiotics and a language metaphor for the study of materials by suggesting that there is a certain grammar that underlies the architectural competence of the builders. In his analysis Glassie presented specific rule for building deduced from close observations. The rules are detailed and it is at times challenging to imagine the way they represent themselves in buildings and how some rules seem to be presented as dependent one others or necessarily have other rules follow them.

To better understand Glassie's structural analysis, I used Fröbel's Gift 6 as a way to layout the rules on my kitchen table. By making the rules visible and tangible, I was able to better connect to Glassie's analysis. Here is a picture essay that lays out the main rules using the building blocks in Fröbel's gift 6:

I laid out an approximation of the scale of the basic shapes.

I used base shape "X" to start my structure. To extend my base shape built up in 3 dimensions by treading the shape equally, meaning that I did not change the base shape as I built upwards. 

 I explored rules of massing and piercing, by adding windows to my 1 story tall structure

Here a backward expansion is shown, to illustrate the way the structure would be pierces to create an opening between the first and second base shape. 

I added roofing onto the shape in order to further extend upwards.

This is the final presentation of the rules combined. 

Lastly, I tried to construct a Type 1 house with the building blocks of Fröbel's Gift 6. It was actually quite complicated to construct the house with the materials available, and I had to employ mathematical reasoning related to geometry and fractions to make this simple structure.

This exploration helped me appreciate the value of the gifts in a practical way beyond early childhood education. The shapes themselves made it possible for me to approach complex analysis of a field that I am new to in more concrete ways. I think that it would be wonderful to include more concrete, yet simple tools like the Fröbel's gifts throughout educations rather than only during Kindergarten and doctoral studies. 

From a construction site to makerspaces

Me playing with a bucket – Malchen, Germany 

From as long as I can remember, the construction site for the renovation of my parent's turn of the century German timer framed house was my playground. There, the piled up wooden planks formed serendipitous caves that became imaginative make-shift shelters. Plastic buckets filled with water, sand, or scrap materials became rhythmical instruments. The stumbled upon crooked nails and hand tools became ways for building remote controls for communicating with outer space.

The construction site, what later became the yard of the house, was a ground for endless journeys of imagination and seems to have been the headquarters for planning adventures among the neighboring children and me. From here, we set off to the nearby forrest to concur the fleets of foreign waters that were represented by the trees a hurricane caused to fall and shuffle one on top of the other. While perhaps the stuff of nightmares for a caring parent, one of the greatest adventures of my earlier years was setting off with a group of friends to the other side of the village to slide down the sand dunes of a large scale construction site. 

Besides imaginative, adventurous explorations and serving as a space for connecting with others, the site allowed me to find my play space within the larger context of an adult construction site. I learned how to differentiate adult tools, such as buzz saws and cement machines, from more child-friendly materials, such as buckets, water, and sawdust. I was tasked with important decisions, such as seemingly selecting the color of the plaster of the house.

It is challenging to pin point in a few sentences what made the construction site special to me, how it conditioned my learning trajectory, personal development, the way I am or going to be. What I know is that the experience of growing up in this unique environment was particular. The opportunity to try myself out, to connect to others, to use as a jumping off point for developing ideas, to truly listen to the oddities of materials are things I am truly grateful for. The creative play I was able to experience perhaps inspired my love to exploring new things, taking off for new challenges, setting my own goals, and perhaps even conditioned my interest in making to learn. I believe the site gave me the chance to learn to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, being at home in makeshift environments, and to see the potential of the unfinished.