From Apprentice Architect (Fondation Louis Vuitton/Touch Press)

Through interactive activities users will have an opportunity to explore a museum designed by Frank Gehry and consider some of the decisions an architect makes about shape, color, pattern, and light as they design their own buildings. Kathleen S. Wilson reviews Apprentice Architect. Architects have the ability to transform, inspire, and transcend on a grand scale, none more so than Frank Gehry, whose particular architectural vision is among the most distinctive in the world today. Terms such as post-structuralist and decontructivist are often bandied about when discussing his work, but words alone do not suffice. Architecture needs to be experienced to be understood. For this reason, Touch Press built a highly visual, interactive app with numerous opportunities for exploration, discovery, and creation in Apprentice Architect  (iOS, Free; Gr 3-6), an introduction to the new, Gehry-designed contemporary art museum in Paris, the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Six activities form the core of the experience. Each one introduces a different aspect of the development of the building. "My Sketchbook" and "My Studio" focus on visualization and design. The first is a simple 2-D tool that can be used to create a sketch of an edifice by selecting shapes from Gehry's palette of inspirational objects such as waves, sand dunes, and sailing ships, as well as colors, patterns, and backgrounds, then resizing, reshaping, and rotating them. "My Studio" is a 3-D tool for designing a building by manipulating glass sail and iceberg shapes, two of Gehry’s structural building blocks. Any number of shapes can be chosen by color (glass sails) or pattern (icebergs), then positioned, sized, rotated, stretched, and shrunk to form a simple 3-D model. A whimsical touch includes a slider that can be used to “blow wind” into the sails. Other activities focus on exploring the structure of the museum and visual perspectives. "Look Around You" presents views from six vantage points inside the building and asks users to find the spot in the building they’d need to stand to see the views. "How Does This Work" offers high-resolution, panoramic images of four of the museum’s structural design features, which can be explored visually in 360 degrees and probed for further information. The final two activities are more gamelike. "Where’s Frank," a zoomable, cutaway graphic image of the museum’s interior with people visible on the various floors, invites children to find specific museum employees (a gardener, an engineer, a guide, a curator, a visitor, an artist, etc.) and learn more about the roles they play. Children are put in the role of a crane operator in "Take the Controls," as they try to place glass panels into the curved roof of the museum without dropping (and breaking) them. While visitors to Fondation Louis Vuitton will appreciate Apprentice Architect (the app has no sound, making it a discreet guide in the museum), children will also enjoy its engaging activities off-site. The text is available in English and French, the cartoonlike graphics are colorful and viewer-friendly, and the navigation is self-explanatory. Instructions for activities are available, if needed. When first entering the app, children can input their names. When leaving, they can choose to email themselves a certificate of their visit. If you’re looking for a fun, hands-on glimpse into Frank Gehry’s mind, creative genius, architectural style, and process, Apprentice Architect can't be beat.—Kathleen S. Wilson, New York University, NY, NY “When kids come to the Fondation, I want them to elevate their imagination, so they grow up thinking of architecture differently.”–Frank Gehry.             For additional app reviews, visit our dedicated app webpage.  

From Apprentice Architect (Fondation Louis Vuitton/Touch Press)