‘A Vila do Maña’ works with three-dimensional elements, based on Froebel’s “third gift”.
In architecture we have Froebel as a reference, through Frank Lloyd Wrigth who was educated with this method. It is a system based on the creativity and intuition of the child through direct experience, play and nature. It creates a pedagogical resource based on ‘gifts’ and ‘occupations’. The ‘gifts’ are pedagogical materials that do not change, but are transformed; the ‘occupations’ are activities in which children play by transforming the objects they manipulate. The ‘gifts’ are precursors of today’s building blocks.

The aim of ‘A Vila da Mañá’ is to change the model of town or city, we believe that another one can be possible. This is achieved through the protagonist participation of local children and adolescents who, by working with fundamental concepts through tactical urban planning actions, become active citizens capable of transforming their spaces.

In this case, the village is worked on, like its habitat, its game board to be discovered. Understanding its structure, conformation, morphology, its voids and its fillings, its history, its traditions, and its symbolic and immaterial issues is essential to be able to reflect on how they move from one site to another, the routes, the points important where the lives of the girls, boys and teenagers of the community develop.

The aim of ‘A Vila da Mañá’ is to change the model of town or city, we believe that another one can be possible. This is achieved through the protagonist participation of local children and adolescents who, by working with fundamental concepts through tactical urban planning actions, become active citizens capable of transforming their spaces.

In this case, the landscape is worked on, looking for the interaction between the built, the more natural and the intermediate territories. Understanding how people build and modify the landscape and how we inhabit it, and it builds us and our identity.

Work begins with PERCEPTION. How do the future inhabitants of the place perceive their village or city? To explore this, participants are invited to use simple drawings to show us which elements they consider fundamental or particularly interesting in their village or city. In this way, we can understand their individual views of the place they live in and begin to build a collective vision shared by all participants.