Abstract:

Besides their basic function, museums make substantial contributions to education in developed countries. Museums have become utilization centers for students, teachers and parents due to their activities addressing different age groups in particular at pre-school, primary school and middle school stages. In their study named “Museum Education and Cultural Identity”, Seidel and Hudson state that as schools primarily ensure children's mental comprehension, museums can create feelings and atmosphere to enhance their insights. In the same study, museum instructor Helena Friman emphasizes that school education can become easily abstract while the children in a museum can demonstrate their spirit of research as they see, touch, smell, hold and use tools.
This paper covers a research on children workshops about "architecture", which are organized by private museums in Turkey. In this context, 4 private foundation museums in Istanbul have been taken. These museums are “Istanbul Modern”, “Sabanci Museum”, “Koc Museum” and “Pera Museum”. The activities of Koc Museum about "architecture" are “The Architect Sinan’s Secret” (practicing how to construct a simple archway), which has been created for the activity "Colorful Mathematical World- Learn and Have Fun", “Can You Build Leonardo’s Halic Bridge” (building a model bridge out of wooden elements) and “Puzzle” activities (bringing different geometrical objects together to complete a whole figure). The activity “Here Comes the Sun”, offers school children the opportunity to design energy-saving model houses and bring these together to build the power city of tomorrow.
The museum İstanbul Modern offers children the architectural activity "Designing Spaces for Domestic Animals". In this activity, children are asked to design houses for their real or virtual pets- cats and animals- with the materials given.
The key activity of Sabanci Museum about "architecture" is related to an exhibition named “Legendary Istanbul: From Byzantine to Istanbul - 8000 Years of a Capital”. In this exhibition, children are given information by expert guides about the rich cultural heritage of Istanbul, the capital of Byzantine and Ottoman Empire, and then at a workshop they are asked to draw pictures about Istanbul.
The main children activities of Pera Museum about "architecture" are "I design a Building" (within this activity, children have examined the Pera Museum building and some surrounding historical buildings, and then drawn sketches to design tomorrow's building); My Dream Tiles" (Children have drawn sketches on tracing papers at workshops and designed their unique tiles after visiting the guided exhibition "Kutahya Tiles and Ceramics Collection".)
In this paper, architectural activities organized by the relevant museums will be discussed, assessing the interviews with the museum instructors and examining the results of a survey made up of 16 questions. These questions are based on the reason of choosing the activities related to "architecture" as well as their duration, scope, content, frequency and the feedback given by children at the end of the activities. The paper ends with findings and implications.

Keywords:

Children, architecture, education, museum, workshop.