CO-DESIGNING COLOUR WITH THE MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD

Co-design is a powerful force for creativity and collaboration, particularly when it incorporates the freedom, expression and imagination of children.

FranklinTill has been working with London-based architecture practice AOC, lead designer in the transformation of the V&A Museum of Childhood in east London. The firm’s acronym stands for Agents of Change and it was founded on the premise that the participation of others in the design process creates better buildings. Working with children from local schools and the local community, AOC has been collaboratively developing its designs to create a public building that aims to instil creative confidence in future generations.

The Co-designing Colour workshop, run by FranklinTill and AOC with local school children, aimed to generate a colour palette to inform the museum design process. Through scavenging objects, textures, materials and images from the local area and bringing them back into the museum, the children constructed three-dimensional palettes. Each joyful assemblage translates the child’s colour, form and textural notion of an individual key word extracted from the spacial design brief. The children then refined their selection to five or six colours, with careful colour mixing producing a final palette swatch. The results are an explosion of expressive textural combinations, conveying a sense of unbridled freedom, intuition and raw creativity.