For ‘Ark’ to triumph, let kids go with the flow

“THERE is a kind of play common to nearly every child,” the British architectural historian John Summerson writes at the beginning of “Heavenly Mansions,” his appealingly idiosyncratic essay on miniature buildings and the roots of Gothic architecture. “It is to get under a piece of furniture or some extemporized shelter of his own and to exclaim that he is in a ‘house’ .... This kind of play has much to do with the aesthetics of architecture.”

The same kind of play -- and the fascination it produces in children and adults alike -- is in many ways the inspiration for “Noah’s Ark,” the new 8,000-square-foot permanent exhibition opening Tuesday at the Skirball Cultural Center. The curving, 17-foot-high ark and its contents are the work of architects Alan Maskin and Jim Olson, of the Seattle firm Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen, and puppeteer Chris M. Green.

The ark is made of unpainted fir and divided into halves that are separated by a long walkway. It is crammed with ropes and climbing structures and animals that recall several strains of folk art as well as the work of midcentury designer Alexander Girard. It includes a number of small, house-like structures and other snug places that tap into the productive mix of design and miniaturization that Summerson describes.

As a piece of architecture, it is a remarkably effective study in scale: a collection of little houses inside a bigger house (the ark) inside a gigantic house (the museum itself, which was designed by Moshe Safdie). Olson and Maskin have carefully arranged the two halves of the ark to represent the passage of time: The first bay looks deliberately unfinished, the second, weathered. And in the way it turns the materials of everyday life into museum-quality objects, it represents a welcome respite from the world of plastic and pixels that engulfs most American kids these days.

Again with the educational angle

AS I learned when I brought my 3-year-old daughter along on a tour of “Noah’s Ark” a couple of weeks ago, the exhibit is an amalgam of other influences too. Disappointingly enough, it manages periodically to tamp down the sense of discovery it’s seemingly designed to celebrate.

The leaders of the Skirball seem to have decided that for “Noah’s Ark” to really work as an educational space -- and, presumably, to satisfy the expectations of its various philanthropic funders -- they can’t simply let the kids run free through the space and wile away their time climbing the rope ladder or feeding pretend carrots to stuffed hedgehogs. They have to corral them every few minutes into groups that will allow the museum to measure the amount of instruction the pint-sized, Croc-wearing visitors are getting.

After having spent $5 million and five years preparing the exhibition, and having given over a large section of the museum’s square footage to it, the Skirball apparently thought there was too much at stake for its future and its redefined mission to simply open the space, staff it and let the kids have at it.

This is an issue with all kinds of facilities being built for children around the country. Because there is now so much grant money earmarked for educational programs, every new museum includes an over-designed area for kids -- a shiny, happy ghetto stuffed with art supplies and tiny chairs and smiling “facilitators” who show them where the markers are kept. These rooms say to children that the rest of the building -- the rooms where the art is kept -- is not for them.

It may seem churlish to raise this point. But there is an architectural component to this change in philanthropic emphasis that has not really been talked about much -- and, indeed, the “Noah’s Ark” exhibition as a whole is a byproduct of the shift. To be fair, such installations are also being built to satisfy the priorities of a whole generation of parents -- of which I’m a member -- who have trouble with the idea that there could be such a thing as a museum, restaurant or public activity that our children are not yet old enough to enjoy. Since we are now bringing kids anywhere and everywhere, anywhere and everywhere are having to adapt.

The last four or five years, meanwhile, have seen a mini-boom in permanent and highly designed landscapes for children. Frank Gehry, it was announced this month, is designing a playground in Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan. On the other side of Manhattan, David Rockwell, whose firm is best known for restaurant design, is working on an ambitious play space near the South Street Seaport.

And one of the most vital genres of contemporary landscape architecture, believe it or not, is the skate park. You could write a dissertation on what it means that the subculture of skateboarding, which once defined itself by its creative disrespect for rules or regulations of any kind, is being steered into sanctioned, controlled facilities, some quite beautifully executed.

Does it mean that skateboarders have lost their edge? Or does it mean that they have won, given that adult America is now giving over to them huge parcels of public real estate?

An over-orchestrated encounter

THINGS at “Noah’s Ark” may change as museum staffers work out the installation’s kinks. It is possible, even likely, that a typical visit will not be as programmed as the media tour I attended. I hope that’s the case, because when I was there, the Skirball seemed determined to turn play, which is at heart fluid and even chaotic, into something predictable and controllable -- a series of ceremonies.

They did this even before the kids were allowed into the ark, sitting them down in a kind of anteroom after they had already been led through an endless stretch of hallways, staircases and checkpoints. There they listened to a brief but Very Important lecture about Noah and his ark and what the project they were about to see said about how much the Skirball values those great buzzwords of the day, “community” and “diversity.” The script seemed to have come directly off the page of a grant application.

Inside, the same attitude seeped into the play spaces. Just when my daughter was beginning to lose herself in some imaginary game involving the little wooden houses inside the ark’s first bay, a number of Skirball staffers walked through, banging on drums in an impossible-to-ignore metronomic rhythm. It was a way of calling all the kids to a planned music circle just outside the entrance to the first half of the ark. It also served to symbolize some of what is off-key about the place, the way the experience of moving through it has been freighted with “teachable moments” and life-affirming lessons about how, as humans, we’re all stuck on the same boat.

Not to mention that its uplifting, we-can-all-get-along message seems directly at odds with the dark biblical story that the whole exhibit is based on. Have you read the sections of Genesis that have to do with Noah and his ark lately? The animals on the ark, you’ll recall, are taking safe haven there while God, disgusted at his own decision to create the human race, kills every other man and woman and child and animal and fish on Earth. Simply wipes them out. This is the Old Testament God at his most violent and most vengeful.

But who wants to hear about that when the music circle is about to begin? Who wants to get bogged down in those details when the storyteller -- you know, the one with the burgeoning acting career and the degree in early childhood development -- is getting ready for her 4:10 p.m. session on ark-related fables around the world?

The word Summerson uses to describe the forts and little houses we all construct as children, using sheets or leaves, is “extemporized.” “Noah’s Ark,” for all the thoughtfulness of its design, is anything but that. As much as my daughter liked the exhibit -- and she is already asking to go back -- she had more fun in the spacious amphitheater that sits near the exit to “Noah’s Ark.” They had cookies there, and room to run around.

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christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com