A Beginners Mind

PROCEEDINGS
21st National Conference
on the Beginning Design Student

Stephen Temple, editor

Conference held at the

College of Architecture
The University of Texas at San Antonio
24-26 February 2005
A Beginners Mind
PROCEEDINGS
21st National Conference
on the Beginning Design Student

Stephen Temple, editor

College of Architecture
The University of Texas at San Antonio
24-26 February 2005

Situating Beginnings
Questioning Representation
Alternative Educations
Abstractions and Conceptions
Developing Beginnings
Pedagogical Constructions
Primary Contexts
Informing Beginnings
Educational Pedagogies
Analog / Digital Beginnings
Curriculum and Continuity
Interdisciplinary Curricula
Beginnings
Design / Build
Cultural Pluralities
Contentions
Revisions
Projections
Offered through the Research Office for Novice Design
Education, LSU, College of Art and Design, School of
Architecture.

Copyright 2006 University of Texas San Antonio

/ individual articles produced and edited by the authors

Printed proceedings produced by Stephen Temple, Associate Professor, University of Texas San Antonio.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without
written permission of the publisher.

Published by:
University of Texas San Antonio
College of Architecture
501 West Durango Blvd.
San Antonio TX 78207
210 458-3010
fax 210 458-3016

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Temple, Stephen, editor

A Beginners Mind: Proceedings of the 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student /
edited and compiled by Stephen Temple
1. Architecture - Teaching 2. Architecture - Design 3. Design - Teaching

ISBN 0-615-13123-9
Beginnings of a Designers Mind in Children:
The Psychology of Design in Early Childhood Education

CHUNG O. KIM
University of California at Berkeley

WILLIAM T. WILLOUGHBY
Louisiana Tech University

Introduction
Design has proliferated in contemporary life. As members of the developed world, every
aspect of life today insists that we be consumers of design. Yet there exists a wide gulf between
1
designers and the appreciation of design amongst the general populace. Design consumption
expands, whereas peoples sensibility for quality design diminishes. Why does this paradox exist?
Should we agree, as Donald Norman claims in The Design of Everyday Things, that the blame
falls upon designers for the fact that the essential aim of their discipline is misunderstood by most
people?
The existence of the gulf between designers and consumers of design can be remedied
through education. The intimate connoisseurship for design develops in designers through both
their education and the daily practice of thinking about design. Knowledge of design as a method
for making sets a person up for appreciating good design. With this said, consumers of design
need some introductory design education. Developing a sensibility for design logic is essential for
adapting to todays world. This leads to two critical questions: What is essential to design thinking
and when should design education begin?
To improve the general awareness of design in our culture, we argue that early education
is essential. Just as instructing children in the making of music increases their appreciation for
melody, harmony, meter, etc. . . . so could it be for design. Elementary education teaches music,
art, language skills, science and math but nothing of design or the mental processes that
underpin it. This essay suggests that there should be a push from designers and design
educators to introduce design thinking during the early years of brain development a time when
thought capacity expands, ones conception of the world begins taking shape, and the interaction
of basic mental faculties develops.
What mental processes underpin design thinking? We argue that design merges the
divergent qualities of purpose and meaning in the making of something. To develop the ability to
design, or to even learn enough to appreciate design virtuosity, children must be educated so as
to develop a sensibility for design. This essay explores such topics as early cognitive
development in children, the structure of the psyche, and strategies for teaching design to
children.

Seeing Purpose and Meaning: Perception and Intuition

There are two significant ways of seeing the world as purposeful and meaningful. Both
methods aim to access reality. The search for purpose is based upon outer-perceptions
(sensation) independent of human expectations. The search for meaning is conditioned by inner-
perceptions (intuition) dependent on human expectations. Seeing with our eyes, coupled with our
2
insight, forms for us a synthetic conception of the world. Both purpose and meaning rely on an
awareness of the link between our inner self and the surrounding universe.
Yet it is in the best interest of design and architecture, as has been known since the time
of Vitruvius, that an architect [cum designer] be armed at all points with thorough knowledge of
3
both how things work and what those same things mean. Both inductive and deductive

162 PROCEEDINGS: 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student San Antonio 2005
capacities cooperate in the mind of the architect and designer. In order to design, the mind must
develop the flexibility to move along a mental continuum that exists between intuitions (mind to
inner self) and perceptions (outer senses to mind). The education of children should exercise the
continuums ends (perceptiveness and intuition) and the transactions between capacities
important in just about all aspects of design. We believe that the current status of early education
reinforces both ends, but not the necessary relation between perception and intuition as needed
for design thinking.

Construction of Knowledge in Children

Design impacts a childs mind with greater effect than as it does adults. In fact, design is
crucial to children at the early stages of brain development. A childs brain develops and matures
through interaction with their immediate social and physical environment. Yet a child is not a
passive organism bombarded by external stimuli. On the contrary, children are active agents in
their own development by exploring, discovering, testing, and transacting with their environment.
Brain development occurs through the dynamic interaction between child and environment in
combination with the feedback received by the mind through perception. The patterns of design,
when perceived and interpreted in early childhood, will linger in a childs mind for the rest of their
lives. Design affects a subtle psychological influence on the development of deep mental
structures.
Jean Piaget, the renowned child psychologist, presented hundreds of phenomena and
questions to children that demonstrated fundamental distinctions between childrens and adults
thought processes. Children see (through their developing eyes) a world that is neither
piecemeal nor or an adult-driven discrimination of reality. Rather, children envision a whole
universe filtered, reduced, and interpreted to a childs perspective. Hence children see and listen
to the world in ways that differ vastly from adults.
Children act with inherent social, mental, and physical potentialities; children are self-
4
active beings. Yet it must be recognized that though independent and active, children are
acculturated from the beginning of life onward. The principal activity of children is adapting to the
social conditions set by adults and impositions made by the physical world. Without acculturation
5
by adults, or necessary adaptations to the world, a child would succumb to autism or even death.

The Development of Syncretic Schema

According to Piaget, knowledge about things implies action at two levels. First, children
structure their world through psycho-sensory interaction with things. Through interaction, children
adapt and organize schemes (or conceptual wholes) that promote the development of a total
intellectual system. Second, through the assimilation of objects into schemes, children recognize
or perceive objects. The application of schemes (through visual scanning, haptic manipulation,
6
aural experience, etc.) gives meaning to our sensory experiences.
For Piaget, perception is based on the development of four fundamental concepts: object,
space, time, and causality. Through perception we recognize and respond effectively to our
environment. Schema is modified through both generalizing and recognitory assimilation (a
sustained mental dialogue that vacillates between the construction of wholes and the inclusion of
7
new parts). A childs development of syncretic schema leads to questions about reality of a
8
cosmogonic nature. Thus, a child applies a set of common behaviors to different objects
(generalizing assimilation) as well as restricts certain behavior patterns to specific objects (setting
9
realistic limits on reality). A parallel notion to these processes is found in prototyping
(extending a common response to a diverse set of objects) and distinctive features learning
10
(responding to specific features of objects) advocated by information-processing theorists.
The Piagetian approach goes further than the approaches advanced by information-
processing theorists. Piaget demonstrates that perception and other cognitive processes are
subordinate to the development of an underlying intellectual schema. Information-processing
theorists propose that perception is an initial activity to be performed within a sequence of events
11
or a hierarchy of functions (as information) entering into the flow of brain processes. Although

PROCEEDINGS: 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student San Antonio 2005 163
information-processing theories are well-founded, they commonly presume that there is no
general intellectual structure (in the sense used by Piaget) that offers comprehensive coherence
while also loosely superseding itself by affecting perceptions of reality as a child develops.

Aspects of a Childs Developing Memory

Once a child perceives, the object of perception must be represented in a
comprehensible form, otherwise the child will disregard it. Developmental theorists, including
Piaget and Bruner advanced watershed discoveries about how memory changes as children
develop. Broadly defined, memory refers to intellectual schemes that shape the construction of
memory and figure into its reconstruction when recollected. Because intellectual structure
changes during child development, the content of memory also changes. Furthermore, followers
of Piaget believe that three qualitatively distinct memories exist: recognition, reconstruction, and
12
recall. These memories have different figurative components and different developmental
onsets. Thus memory is reconstructive rather than eidetic.

Structure of the Psyche in Children: Interactions of Perception and Intuition

Perception inundates the mind with awareness of the surrounding world, re-contouring
the brain over time, and aligning the psyche with the precepts of culture and environment. What
the senses reveal of reality, we recombine in the minds sensorium. For children, the gradual shift
from infantile indifference to perceptual differentiations of acculturated patterns and behaviors is
the very basis for the development of self-consciousness.
Children are exposed to visual patterns replete with psychic discrimination. All children
are in the process of experiencing patterns of nature and patterns of culture (human behavior, art,
and manufacture) for the first time. Initially the child cannot differentiate stimuli and therefore acts
without discrimination. During the earliest stages of human life there is no differentiated identity or
13
ego-consciousness until syncretic schema first form.
Consciousness resides between an outer reality and an inner spirit (consciousness
straddles these two). Perception forms the external skin of consciousness. The flip side of
sensory awareness is a necessary inner-awareness we call intuition; where consciousness
dialogues with an inner spirit (or unconscious) to derive meaning from things. Both perception
and intuition (two mutually dependent capacities of mind) play a part in the reciprocity of reality
and mind. This active dialogue between outside experiences and inner-awareness constitutes the
immediate engagement we maintain with outer reality.
Consciousness is as if it were a mirror of lively awareness set upon the world. But, we
must realize that it is a selective mirror one that registers signs before blank reality. We
disregard what we have been acculturated to view as insignificant and only see that which we
have been attuned to consider as significant. Vitruvius suggests, early in The Ten Books on
Architecture that In all matters [basic to the arts and design], but particularly in architecture, there
14
are these two points: the thing signified, and that which gives it its significance.

Perception, Imagination, and Signs

Vitruvius notion of signs can be traced back to the writings of Aristotle, specifically the
treatise De Anima, or On the Soul. Aristotles treatise is essentially the first comprehensive work
15
on psychology. Aristotle explores the relation between reality and mentality by simply and
methodically exploring the stages by which an object is seen and imagined. As we receive the
world though our sense organs (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch [both receptive and
proproiceptive]), we produce in mind an image of the thing perceived. Through perception of the
surrounding world we induct experiences, and are thereby impressed by matter in our memory.
That which is without, corresponds though perception with that which is within as image.
The ability of the mind to conjure appearances of the world through the recollection of images
(taken from things now absent from the current sphere of external stimuli) is the very basis of
imagination. The ability to imagine is the ability to conjure in the mind images and sensations of
things now absent. All imagining is thinking in signs (a stand-in for something absent).

164 PROCEEDINGS: 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student San Antonio 2005
Imagination connects the minds ability to at once foresee while also the capacity to recollect
perceptions locked in memory. Imagination is an essential attribute to signification; and
signification is the very basis of both representation and design (to design, means etymologically
to conjure signs). As Aristotle states, Imagination cannot occur without perception, nor
16
supposition without imagination.

Intuition, Storytelling, and Meaning for Children

Intuition is a paying attention to what is happening inside of the self. It constitutes an
inner awareness of psychical processes connected to imagination. Through our intuition we
evoke metaphor and construct meaning. For all times, humans have had a susceptibility to
storytelling. We listen excitedly when stories are told; and we seek to digest their meaning in our
lives. It is from stories and the suspension of disbelief that we gain their meaning. We learn to
suspend disbelief when we are children. Belief becomes a necessary part of brain development.
Believing opens the child up to evolving their imaginative capacities, which leads to the making of
metaphor and symbolic thought. Through intuition, we develop an inner world of mental symbols
and hone an inner-sense of what things mean.
Carl Jung asserted that a child forced into a concrete explanation of some notion
considered beyond their years of worldly experience may in fact preclude further development of
that childs creative and imaginative skills. Some children prefer the fantastic (or spiritual)
explanation over and above the scientific truth of things. Side by side with the biological, the
17
spiritual too, has its inviolable rights.

Visual Appreciation, Making Things, and Design Education

The appreciation of something leads to wonder about its making. To appreciate design
we must possess a heightened visual and perceptive sensibility; something called design
literacy. When, if ever, is design literacy taught prior to the specialized schooling required at the
college level?
To appreciate design you must know the how of its making. Designed objects constitute
a specific class of made objects that differ from objects of art and engineering. Designed objects
are purposeful expressions. Designers suspend their disbelief and merge purpose with meaning.
How can we, as designers, expect the culture at large to appreciate design if they are left largely
18
in a state of illiteracy about design? If we define design practice as synthesizing needs and
aspirations into purposes and meanings, then we must realize that no skill as such is encouraged
or reinforced at any level of a childs education. We must remember that design leaves an even
greater and longer-lasting sense impression on a childs psycho-sensory framework that
afterward influences their habits and thinking.
To rephrase the main question of this essay: Should design skills be taught to children
and become a component of learning at a time when such skills could have the greatest effect on
brain development? The answer for every designer should be a resounding Yes. To offset
design illiteracy we must teach children design skills early; but most importantly, for the broader
19
purpose of developing a lasting appreciation for design.
Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel once said, To receive the external world humans have
senses. To give material expression to the world of the mind humans have physical powers and
attributes. To grasp the unity of the spirit humans have intuition, heart and mind, and spiritual
20
awareness. Selected for discussion below is a model teaching strategy created by Friedrich
Froebel that reinforces the basic mental capacities for design. This model which began as a
generally applied method of early-childhood education in the 1850s may have greater relevance
in certain cultures today. As a system it heightens perceptive awareness, cultivates intuitive
expression, and demands the facile interaction between awareness and expression.

Strategies for Teaching: Friedrich Froebel and Frank Lloyd Wright

Most designers have encountered the name of Friedrich Froebel through Frank Lloyd
Wrights book An Autobiography. Most teachers know him as a German early-childhood

PROCEEDINGS: 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student San Antonio 2005 165
education pioneer and founder of the Kindergarten movement. As a material part of a childs
development Froebel and his subsequent followers introduced the gifts, games for structured
21
play, and materials for the occupations for early childhood and Kindergarten education.
Colored soft wool balls, block sets, colored parquet tiles, sticks, and peas were part of a
system of gifts intended to shape and inspire a young childs imagination through active play.
Frank Lloyd Wright said of Froebels educational system: . . . Froebel taught that children should
not be allowed to draw from casual appearances of nature until they had first mastered the basic
forms lying hidden behind appearances [the conception of wholes]. Cosmic, geometric elements
22
were what should first be made visible to the child-mind. And more, The smooth shapely
maple blocks with which to build, the sense of which never afterward leaves the fingers: so form
23
became feeling.
The effect Froebels gifts had on Frank Lloyd Wrights developing perceptions and
intuitions of underlying structure in nature is best revealed in this quote, I soon became
susceptible to constructive pattern [learned through play with Froebels gifts and occupations]
evolving in everything I saw. I learned to see this way, and when I did, I did not care to draw
24
casual incidentals of Nature. I wanted to design. Concepts like proportion, visual pattern, and
spatial relationships were absorbed through structured play (using haptic, motoric, visual,
perceptual, and imagining skills). Similar to a childs encounters with design, early educational
experiences with Froebels gifts affect brain development and resound deep in hypostatic
memory.
Some of Froebels main educational theories can be summarized as follows: the inherent
unity of all things revealed through awareness of inner-connections (a whole composed of
interconnected parts); children learn through self-activity and structured play; perception is the
source of all learning; physical activity should be part of the curriculum (because we learn of the
world through our active, sensing bodies); and most of all that education must come from love,
trust, and security (of home) usually found in the relationship fostered between mother and
25
child.

Gifts and Occupations: Perceptions and Intuitive Expressions

The gifts, just as the word implies, are meant to be accepted by the child, taken into
26
consciousness, and assimilated into the childs mental development. Each gift sequentially
builds upon the complexity of the former. The gifts are scaled relative to each other and therefore
can be used in combination (especially the four block sets of gifts).
The occupations are meant to be raw materials that through structured play introduce
27
techniques inherent in all craft. Yet the occupations offer a greater degree of self-expression
(an expressive giving-out) by creating new wholes that incorporate what was learned through
structured play with the gifts (inductive perceptions). Knowledge gained through interactive play
with the solids, surfaces, lines and points of the gifts returns in expressions made as
occupations by synthesizing perception, imagination, and intuition. As Frank Lloyd Wright said, .
28
. .the early habit of seeing into and seeing from within outward went on and on way beyond. . .
Froebels twenty gifts and occupations outline an elegant, unified system of play-
learning for the very young. There is a specific order of the gift cycle: from soft shape to solid
form, from solid form to plane, to line, to point, and finally back to the skeletal framework of the
29
solid. Learning associated with the gifts is conditioned by organized play that teaches aesthetic
beauty, knowledge of form, color theory, and discovery of natural patterns during the years of
brain development.
Contemporary derivations of Froebels gifts proliferate in todays educational toy market
30
(Lego, Knex, li blocks, Wedgits, FroBlox, Clikits, Zome toys, Tinker Toy etc. ad nauseam). Yet
missing today is Froebels gifts sequence that he so carefully considered relative to mental
development in children. The sequencing of gifts and occupations is essential to Froebels
educational aim. Perception as exercised through activity and physical play (sensorio-motoric)
with the gifts and the development of intuition though self-expression with the occupations
materials creates a conjunctive system fostering harmonious development of both perception and

166 PROCEEDINGS: 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student San Antonio 2005
intuition. As Froebel said, Collectively they form a complete whole . . . [Yet] each is a self-
contained whole, a seed from which manifold new developments may spring to cohere in further
31
unity.
Impingent on Froebels gifts is that they are given sequentially and at crucial moments in
a childs psychic development (beginning with the first gift at about three months of age). Most
important is the sense of unity between gifts (and the superseding of complexity from one gift
into the greater complexity of the next gift), and what they individually demonstrate about the
interrelation between reality and the acquisition of knowledge. All that can be taught by the gifts
is accessed through structured play. We speak of children absorbed in play . . . play has its own
32 33
rewards and intensities. Froebel calls play, the highest level of child development. Play is
structured by the gifts and the games associated with the gifts are essential for discovering the
lessons they offer.

Aspects of Play in Froebels System

Play is never trivial; in fact, it seems to be the very root impulse of design. Play with the
gifts reveals the basics of all design: the basics of color theory, how parts are corporate
elements of wholes, how wholes can be abstracted to constituent parts, notions of pattern and
contrast, formal order and ordering principles, the basic characteristics of geometric forms, and
the interactive potential of various geometries. The gifts demonstrate how wholes at various
stages of a childs development are reconditioned into new and more complex syncretic schema.
If offered in sequence, Froebels system purports a comprehensible structure for the growth of a
childs awareness of the world and awakens a potential designers ability to imagine, compose
realities, and appreciate the world through hand, eye, and mind.

Conclusion
Design does more than fulfill the human need for functionality. Designers must balance
necessity with aspiration, and combine the inherent beauty of purpose with expressions of
cultural meaning. Design, in order to be valued, must be understood and appreciated. The
appreciation of anything requires a period of inculcation. Logic, imagination, a sense of
excitement (in the tension of problem-solving), and seeking expression of meaning all cooperate
in the activity of design. To appreciate design we need to develop a critical ability to perceive with
depth. The development of perception and its interplay with intuition is necessary for deliberate
design. Design requires a continuum of mental capacities drawn forth from raw sensation to the
inner perturbations of intuition.
Designers not only need a greater understanding of the brain and nervous system as
instruments of perception, but also require a deepening of the minds intuitive skills. Though these
two capacities of mind may appear contradictory (we are normally taught that being objective
conflicts with personal feelings) . . . they are actually complimentary. This paraphrases the
physicist Niels Bohr, whose principle of complementarity can be summed up as: what would
appear to be contradictory at first may very well be complementary. Bohr has a motto: Contrari
34
sunt Complementa; or contradictions are complements and therefore share a common truth.
Design, so as to be made and appreciated, requires dialogic understanding taught an early age:
where physical processes (science and play) merge with psychical processes (imagination and
expression). Design requires all functions of the total person (a microcosm) in sync with their
world (the macrocosm).
Froebels gifts and occupations represent only one culturally specific paradigm for
design education. Froebels approach is not a pandemic solution for improving the understanding
and appreciation of design globally. As diverse as cultures are, have been, and will continue to be
. . . there are equally rich approaches available that target innate qualities specific to a culture.
The sanctity of culture should not be usurped or convoluted by methods proposed by advocates
of Froebels methods.
There are no universal strategies for design thinking that do not destroy the autonomy of
the worlds various cultures. Diversity, as such, is bound to distinct locations; and a local design

PROCEEDINGS: 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student San Antonio 2005 167
aesthetic derives from closely guarded cultural biases. The native grace, beauty, and surprising
vastness that can be seen in the range of things made by the worlds diverse peoples should
always inspire one to broad-minded inclusiveness. However, what matters most is to understand
the impact of design on our lives and greater impact design has on a childs developing mind.
To improve a general awareness of design, early education is essential. To increase our
cultures level of visual literacy, begin by teaching children. As children develop their unique
sense of wonder and aim, they reinvigorate ours, and teach us of things and capacities long
forgotten. Through this exchange between child and adult, we forge a little more hope for a world
where the future can be better than before.

Endnotes
1
A gulf, according to Donald Norman, can be defined as separating mental states from physical
things. In this case, the gulf as we discuss here is the disjunction and distance between mental
expectations and symbolical recognition skills of consumers of design and the physical aspects of design as
conceived by designers. Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, Chapter Five, (New York: Basic
Books, 2002).
2
Piaget calls this the formation of a syncretic schema . . . which, by dictionary definition, is a
combination of different forms or beliefs that all coagulate into a single, yet sketchy whole. See Jean Piaget,
The Childs Conception of the World (Totowa, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1965) passim.
3
Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, Book One, Chapter One, The Education of the
Architect (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1960) 5.
4
Essentially a notion adopted by many researchers and educators from the work and writings of J.
H. Pestalozzi. See Gerald Lee Gutek, Pestalozzi & Education (New York: Random House, 1968) passim;
but specifically Chapter III: The Pestalozzian World View. Friedrich Froebel (to be discussed later), along
with other eminent educators of children, were influenced by Pestalozzi.
5
This insight is a combination of ideas from Jean Piaget and Howard Gardner. First, Piaget states,
. . . the childs principal activity is adaptation and who is seeking to adapt itself not only to the adult who
surrounds it but to nature itself. Set this next to Howard Gardners rather bald statement, Take away
culture [from the developing child] and the result is autism or death. Respectively found in Jean Piaget, The
Childs Conception of the World (Totowa, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1965) 29; and Howard
Gardner, Art, Mind, and Brain (New York: Basic Books, 1982) 205.
6
Childhood Cognitive Development: The Essential Readings, editors; Lee, Kang (Malden:
Blackwell Publishers Inc., 2000) 67.
7
Schemata (the plural of schema) are the cognitive or mental structures against which individuals
intellectually adapt to and organize the environment. According to Piaget, assimilation is the cognitive
process by which a person integrates new perceptions, motor skills, or conceptual matter into existing
schemata or patterns of behavior.
8
Piaget as cited by Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955) 107.
9
John H. Flavell, Patricia H. Miller and Scott A. Miller, Cognitive Development (Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice Hall, 1977) 6-7.
10
Ibidem.
11
E.J. Gibson, Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development (New York: Appleton-Century-
Crofts, 1969) 75-85.
12
B. J. Wadsworth, Piagets Theory of Cognitive and Affective Development (New York: Longman,
1989) 171-173.
13
Carl Jung, Child Development and Education, in The Development of Personality (New York:
Bollingen Foundation Inc., 1954) 52-54.
14
Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1960) 5.
15
This assertion and some of these ideas were pointed out but not connected as such by David
Summers in Real Spaces (New York: Phaidon Press Inc., 2003) 316.
16
Aristotle, De Anima (New York: Penguin Books, 1988) 198. Aristotle begins with material
substance followed by an inventory of the senses, then he leads to sense-perception, and ends sequentially
with imagination and intellect as the receptor of form (eidolon: also image, sign, phantasm, abstraction or
idea). Though the notion of syncretic schema as derived from Piaget could be anachronistically construed
as an aim of Aristotle, he (Aristotle) conceived of schemata as essentially the metaphysical basis from
which all forms are derived.

168 PROCEEDINGS: 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student San Antonio 2005
 17
Carl Jung, Psychic Conflicts in a Child, in The Development of Personality (New York: Bollingen
Foundation Inc., 1954) 34.
18
Early in the development of this essay, the disparity between design excellence and popular
insensitivity for design was discussed by the authors much in the same way that Glenn Murcutt in the video
Touch the Earth Lightly (and other interviews) discusses the visual illiteracy that despoils our objects,
buildings, and landscapes. In Australia and other developed nations, the general visual illiteracy of the
populous leaves those without specialized training ignorant of ways of seeing design. Most people are
desensitized to how visual things are composed and miss the chance to gain pleasure from, or discover
meaning within, the world of designed things. Thus the question: How and when do we counteract the trend
toward greater visual illiteracy?
19
This idea is not original to us as authors. We would be remiss not to reference Dr. Sharon Sutton
and the Center for Environment, Education, and Design Studies (CEEDS) and their work of bringing design
education curricula to children. See the CEEDS website: http://ceeds.caup.washington.edu
Another source can be found in George E. Trogler, Beginning Experiences in Architecture (New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1972) 9.
20
Friedrich Froebel, Friedrich Froebel: Writings, edited by Irene M. Lilley (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1967) 103. The quote has been adjusted to be read as gender-neutral by the authors.
21
Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., 9 Commentaries on Frank Lloyd Wright (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989) 1-
35. Also published by Kaufmann in this book are images of a brochure from 1876 summarizing the Effects
of the Kindergarten System and a price catalog for Kindergarten Gifts and Occupation Materials. Froebel
never developed his system into a marketable collection of gifts. All of that came after his death in 1852.
Milton Bradleys company made one of the first sets of gifts, sold game manuals, and materials for the
occupations. Ultimately, it was left to the followers of Froebel to develop the nature and sequence of the
gifts and occupations.
22
Frank Lloyd Wright, A Testament, in Collected Writings: Volume 5 (New York: Rizzoli, 1995)
159.
23
Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (New York: Horizon Press, 1977) 34.
24
Frank Lloyd Wright, A Testament, in Collected Writings: Volume 5 (New York: Rizzoli, 1995)
159-161.
25
H. Courthope Bowen, Froebel and Education through Self-Activity (New York: Charles Scribners
Sons, 1916) passim. All education begins with love. When it comes to making food, designing things, and
rearing children . . . Love is not only the most important ingredient; it is the only ingredient which really
matters. A quote from Edward Espe Brown, The Tassajara Bread Book (Berkeley: Shambala Publications
Inc., 1970) 6. Furthermore, Heinrich Pestalozzi, who influenced Froebel said in aphorism: Without love,
neither the physical nor the intellectual powers will develop naturally. That is only human. From Pestalozzi,
The Education of Man (New York: Greenwood Press, 1951) 33.
26
Froebels 10 Gifts are listed here (the gifts are always returned to their original form, and each
fitted into its respective box):
1. Six colored yarn balls -- red, yellow, blue (primary) and orange, green, purple (complementary) and their
associated games
2. Wooden solids: sphere, cylinder, and cube (and associated games)
3. Wood cubes (one large cube divided into eight constituent cubes)
4. Wooden parallelepipeds (one large cube divided into brick-like solids)
5. Wooden cube further sub-divided into small cubes (27 total) with some bisected on a diagonal (forming
45-degree prism shapes)
6. Wooden cube further sub-divided into small parallelepipeds with some bisected on differing diagonals (as
well as bisections on the perpendicular of both the length and breadth; forming slabs and columns)
7. Colored parquet tiles introducing surface-pattern, colors, and diversity of 2-D geometric shapes
8. Sticks and Rings (circular arcs and complete circles)
9. Beads (or points)
10. Peas and Sticks (meant to combine in skeletal constructions, ala Tinker toys)
27
Froebels 10 Occupations (these materials are always modified and remain in their new form):
1. Perforating or piercing
2. Embroidery
3. Drawing (checkered patterns and free drawing)
4. Cutting paper
5. Weaving paper (plaiting and slat-weaving)
6. Painting
7. Intertwining paper (paper twisting, rope-making)

PROCEEDINGS: 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student San Antonio 2005 169
8. Origami
9. Box construction
10. Modeling clay
28
Frank Lloyd Wright, A Testament, in Collected Writings: Volume 5 (New York: Rizzoli, 1995)
161.
29
Here is a list of web resources related to the study of Froebel (from most informative to least):
The Froebel Foundation USA -- http://www.froebelfoundation.org/
Froebel Gifts -- http://www.froebelusa.com/
Froebel Web -- http://www.froebelweb.org/
The Froebel Education Centre -- http://www.froebel.com/
International Froebel Society -- http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/ses/ifs/index.asp
In the last five years there appears to have been a resurgence of interest and inquiry into the work
and methods of Friedrich Froebel. The resurgence of his strategies for early childhood education may be a
reaction to the passive and mildly interactive forms of learning offered by television, videos, and computer
games. Froebel stresses manual activities and physical games where children engage in tactile, exploratory
learning with solid objects . . . not virtual objects manipulated by a mouse-click.
30
One example listed here, li blocks (created by architect Daniel R. Oakley), are a recent and
unique detour from traditional childrens educational toys. His toys and puzzles take queues from organic
connections (ball to socket joints and interlocking folds as examples). Oakley rethinks the problem of joining
beyond the limits of Euclidian and Platonic geometries and ventures into algorithmic shapes. li blocks use
forms and tectonics that relate more to molecular connections deriving from organic chemistry. What other
insights and mental facileness might children develop after playing with these toys versus a toy like Lego?
31
Friedrich Froebel, Friedrich Froebel: Writings, edited by Irene M. Lilley (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1967) 98.
32
For more on the origins, aspects, and limits of play, please see Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
33
Friedrich Froebel, Friedrich Froebel: Writings, edited by Irene M. Lilley (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1967) 83.
34
There is a link between the theoretical science of Bohr and the psychology of Carl Jung.
Wolfgang Pauli, who worked with Bohr, also collaborated with Jung. Paulis encounters with Jung began first
as a patient in psychoanalytic sessions, and later as a collaborator on some important ideas basic to
Jungian psychology. Their collaboration divulged some startling correspondences between the principles of
quantum physics and the machinations of the psyche. Essentially, both Pauli and Jung share co-authorship
of the theory of synchronicity. Therefore, it is not so unorthodox in this essay to invoke Neils Bohrs principle
of complementarity when discussing the mental processes that underpin design thinking.

170 PROCEEDINGS: 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student San Antonio 2005