High Rent District

My daughter and I spent the day in the city with another mom and daughter at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The museum has a different family program once a month, and this month was a program called "KidsBuild" which was also sponsored by the Boston Society of Architects.

In a large glass-walled room, a large-scale grid of a city was set up with four zones: residential, commercial, industrial, and public/institutional. The kids decided which kind of building they want to construct, and then they were assigned a site and a "building permit" for their type of building on their type of lot. The kids constructed their building, using all sorts of materials donated by various businesses, and then after a building review, they got a certificate of occupancy by a volunteer "building inspector." It really was a lot of fun.

At the end of the event, there was a wide array of buildings -- "city in the city" as my daughter called it. The girls constructed a high-rise apartment building with a pool on the roof, a sandbox in the garden, and its own private movie theater. The theater and pool put them a bit over their height limit, but they got a variance after pointing out to the building inspector that the added features were all quite necessary. I don't think I'd be able to afford an apartment in their fancy building, but my daughter assured me that I could come and visit any time.