"Building Connections 2009" at the Center for Architecture

Face it: Your kids have officially OD’d on finger painting, coloring and sculpting Play-Doh. The problem: You can’t think of anything else for them to make!

Happily, the Center for Architecture Foundation's summer studio has some great ideas. The museum’s annual "Building Connections" exhibition, currently on view in its basement gallery, abounds with inventive, appealing art projects for kids of all ages. All of the works on display were made by local K–12 students enrolled in the Center’s programs. The exhibition includes their impressive results as well as information and videos about their processes.

While all of the projects are worth regarding, there are a few that your crafty tykes definitely won’t want to miss. One is a cardboard model of a block's worth of turn-of-the-century Lower East Side tenements, complete with tiny airshafts, fire escapes, food carts on the sidewalks and windows displaying scenes of cramped kitchens. A veritable homemade dollhouse, it calls out to be copied in your own home (come on, make use of all those boxes you've got lying around).

A series of model roller coasters (made by a class of elementary school students after they'd “studied” the diversions at Rye Playland) is also an enticing, eye-popping wonder, as is a utopian imagining of the neighborhood of Manhattanville. Students at a school in Morningside Heights investigated Columbia University’s plans to expand north and then created a three-dimensional model of their own fanciful vision for the “blighted” area (spoiler: It features an Egyptian pyramid).

Looking for bigger inspiration? Then head out the door and explore nearby nabes with help from two other projects on display. Students at P.S. 42 created a cell-phone audio tour of the Lower East Side’s architecture, and fourth-graders at P.S. 3 put together the equivalent for Greenwich Village. With luck, the walks will lead you past a hardware store so you can buy supplies for the works your kids will now undoubtedly be scheming to make.—Julia Israel

“Building Connections 2009” is on view at the Center for Architecture through Jan 9.

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