After Delft - Thera Huijsmans
When the banking crisis rocked the construction industry in 2008, the young architect Thera Huijsmans found herself without a job. She now teaches at a technasium and founded Archiklas.
Thera Huijsmans
Place of residence: RotterdamCivil status: Living together, three children
Programme: Architecture, Master’s degree in Architecture & Modernity (2006)
Student Society: Sint Jansbrug
I really didn’t have a clue what I wanted to study,” confesses Thera Huijsmans (1979). When she heard one of her friends talking enthusiastically about his work as an architect, she decided to study architecture. She was drawn by the combination of creativity and science. She found the first year particularly difficult. “Most of the other students had made a very conscious decision to study architecture and used models in their presentations; I turned up with drawings on squared paper. I had no idea! I started my studies with a fail.” After a somewhat difficult time during the Bachelor’s phase, things picked up during her Master’s degree in Architecture and Modernity and she graduated in 2006. Huijsmans looks back on a vibrant social life as a member of the Sint Jansbrug student association and she did an internship abroad.
She then got a job at an architects’ firm. But when the financial crisis rocked the construction industry in 2008, she lost her job. “A lot of architects I knew started to retrain. I decided to do the short version of the PABO because I liked interacting with kids. After that I ended up at WeekendKlas Leiden, where children from less privileged backgrounds are taught by architects, confectioners and doctors. It’s a great way for them to find out about jobs that they perhaps don’t know much about.” Huijsmans is now a research & design teacher at the technical department at the Christian Lyceum in Delft.
Last year, Huijsmans teamed up with Karen Schuijt and Maël Vanhelsuwé to launch Archiklas, an initiative aimed at introducing primary school children to the principles of inquiry-based and design-based learning. The first pilot programmes have since come to an end.
“You can apply a design cycle like this, which is used in architecture, to all kinds of subjects. I want children to use it as a tool to look at problems and solve them. Archiklas teaches them how to brainstorm, analyse, sketch variants and be critical. Children have an open attitude and are enthusiastic about this form of learning.”
Archiklas is not only for schools, but also for municipalities and companies. For example, the municipality of Rotterdam asked Archiklas to develop climate talks for children. “We need to involve children in social issues. Our clients find Archiklas’s open and flexible way of thinking refreshing.”
Through Archiklas, Huijsmans has found a bridge between the PABO and architecture. And yes, she has Delft to thank for that. “When we kept having to do analysis after analysis, I often thought to myself: ‘Here we go again.’ When I was studying, I didn’t really know what I was learning. Now that I’m working, it all makes sense. I wouldn’t have been able to do all this had I not done that degree.”