Amy F. Ogata Object Lessons: Design, Creativity and the Material Culture of Postwar Childhood During my three-month stay at the CCA, I worked on the material culture of childhood in postwar America. I studied two aspects of this project: toy design and the architecture of postwar schools. My book, Object Lessons: Design, Creativity and the Material Culture of Postwar American Childhood, will explore how the concept of creativity emerged as a dominant social and aesthetic value in both the items sold to parents and teachers and in the popular literature and scientific research of this period. I suggest that objects such as toys and furniture and spaces such as bedrooms, playrooms, and schools were conceived with new faith in imagination and artistic modernism in an ef<strong>for</strong>t to cultivate (and maintain) individuality, creativity, and intelligence. I arrived in Montréal having already conducted substantial research on toy design. Although I had a good command of the secondary literature and had worked in several archives, I discovered many new aspects of the subject during my fellowship. Working with the CCA’s fine collection of building toys firsthand, I was able to study the packaging and the <strong>for</strong>mal qualities of toys I had already tried to describe from photographs. I also discovered several new problems. A folded page of precise directions that accompanied Charles and Ray Eames’s Little Toy (1951), <strong>for</strong> example, led me to question my assumption about the age of the children <strong>for</strong> whom this toy was intended and the degree to which children were encouraged to experiment on their own. Another example, the Magnet Master (1949), a project of Arthur Carrara, a Chicago architect, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, told a very different story. The kit of brightly coloured steel plates and Alnico magnets came without directions, but with instructions to parents to allow children to build on their own. For my presentation I had many examples from the collection on view and the discussion afterward encouraged me to focus on the relationship between 36 toy building and architectural representation and on the image of the arts in America during the Cold War. I felt extremely lucky to be among such generous colleagues, who offered new perspectives on the material and useful suggestions <strong>for</strong> framing the entire argument. An article based in part on this research is <strong>for</strong>thcoming in the Winterthur Portfolio (June 2<strong>00</strong>5). In my presentation I also looked at how children occupied new spaces in the domestic interior. While I had intended to take this up as the next part of my research, I found that the CCA had an excellent collection of books, periodicals, and pamphlets on postwar school design in America and Europe. As the American baby boom cohort swelled in the years after World War II, the need <strong>for</strong> updated and new schools resulted in a campaign to build thousands of new facilities across the country. Many architects, even those working with conservative school districts, adopted economical building solutions employing the technology of war industries. The periodicals I consulted in the CCA Library were rich with discussions about designing flexible teaching space, and using materials such as poured concrete slab, steel frames, heated floors, and air conditioning. A spate of monographs on school building also directed my attention to parallel debates on lighting, colour, and furniture design. Moreover, the CCA had most of the pamphlets issued by Educational Facilities Laboratory, a program sponsored by the Ford Foundation. Begun in the mid 1950s, EFL brought together educators, architects, manufacturers, and government officials responsible <strong>for</strong> school building to encourage new ideas. These sources not only show how pedagogical theories became visible architecturally, but also the extent to which the practice of architecture embodied postwar values of abstraction, imagination, and creativity. I will present two conference papers on this material in the coming year.
I am grateful to the CCA <strong>for</strong> allowing me access to the Library, the collections, and knowledgeable staff as well as to my colleagues <strong>for</strong> a stimulating and productive summer. 37
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