“Silk House” is the 2nd kids’ construction festival after “City in the Sky” sponsored by La Natur. This time we selected a camphor forest as our construction site, where 40 children aged between 6-12 years old and their parents took part in this festival. On the weekends during March to June, the kids and their parents gathered in our Architecture School (School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Huazhong University of Science and Technology) to learn and built. From the very beginning of knowing the site under tutoring by the architects, the kids were required to hand in their sketch and model after they get the basic knowledge about the architecture design and civil engineering. On May, we started to build the real Silk House in the camphor forest, backyard of the Architecture School.

We define the building between the camphor trees as Silk House because that camphor trees are not only the surroundings of the building, but also part of the building structure. Our architects along with the kid took material tests several times and finally we picked out steel wire while hemp string. We make structures by steel wire to form the space of major part of Silk House and use hemp string to enclose the building to model the appearance and style. The kids would find the invisible architecture structure in the forest by their innocent and brilliant eyes. And architects offered the ways of creating rooms by weaving in order to guide them. In this activity, building seems like a big toy in the forest with its unique environmental construction, the style defined by trees and the fairshaped form created by children’s interest. Thus, for no foundation, no pillar, no beam nor any other pole stuff, Silk House is not the building traditionally. But Silk House does redefine the possibility of building and extend the boundary of architecture. Architecture, as the old science, gets answers of the four existing questions from the children taking this Natur activity. Who will design? Who will build? Which type of structure? And who will host the building? There comes the answers: children are the main builders.; parents contribute to kids’ inspiration;  architects offer the guidance; dnd the forest provide for the invisible form of architecture.

Silk House is another trial activity of children construction. It may end anytime, but it can also continue forever and anywhere.