Learning by Explaining: “Les Petits Constructeurs”, A Pedagogical Experiment Where Architecture Students Teach Construction Principles to Children

The building sector’s transition toward sustainability requires a shift from material-intensive design to geometry-driven structural intelligence. However, traditional architectural education often fails to bridge the gap between abstract structural theory and material economy. This paper evaluates “Les Petits Constructeurs,” an innovative pedagogical program at ENSA Paris-La Villette where Master’s students teach complex structural concepts—such as funicular logic, inertia, and shell behavior—to children aged 6-10. Grounded in the “learning by explaining” model and inspired by Faraday’s Christmas Lectures, the program posits that the necessity of simplifying complex phenomena for a novice audience fosters a deeper conceptual appropriation for the student. To test this hypothesis, a comparative study was conducted, contrasting the progress of participating students with a control group following a traditional project-based curriculum. Initial results (2024-2025) demonstrate that participants achieved an average improvement score 22.5 points higher (on a 100-point scale) than the control group. These findings suggest that technical mediation and pedagogical transposition are effective tools for anchoring sustainable design reflexes, offering a transferable model for integrating collective intelligence and material economy into architectural education.