1. Duplo
As I wrote in Living in Lego City in 2012, Lego proper offers a limited number of scenarios, the sets dividing starkly into those “for girls” and those “for boys.” Duplo, sized for smaller hands, suffers no such split personality. There are house sets and vehicle sets, which offer up useful pieces of domesticity like beds and fences, and transportation options like wheel bases. If you are lucky, as we were, you can score a hand-me-down bin of blocks, in rainbow colors, and a set of different-size platforms. My son began building on those platforms at age 2, and he hasn’t stopped. We’ve made houses and Bat caves, the High Line and garages, skyscrapers and mazes. Even though we now have Lego proper, the kids return to the Duplo for its scale and speed. You can throw something together in a minute to house a superhero action figure, or make a sketch of a city as backdrop.

2. Tubation
When we got Tubation as a gift I sort of shrugged. Was it a bath toy? An instrument? We weren’t ready yet for a marble run. But then my son got his hands on it and better things happened. (Sometimes we lose imagination as we age.) Swords, dinosaurs, canopies, bracelets and, yes, a gun or two. Even little hands can put the tubes together and take them apart, and their gross scale makes it easy to create child-size tools. There are specialized sets with instrument add-ons, marble slots and transparent tubes but those are hardly necessary. This toy is like the stick of building toys, and it is inexpensive too.

3. Magna-Tiles
This is an expensive toy, about $1 per tile, but I’ve recommended it over and over. We now have 300 pieces, through a combination of gifts, hand-me-downs and purchases. At times, when the castle turned into a skyscraper that needed a multilevel garage that stretched across the windowsill, we needed even more. Magna-Tiles are easier than Lego, and you can make something tall and beautiful in a flash. As kids get older, they move beyond the basic squares (in two sizes) and start thinking about the possibilities of the triangles, matching them into squares when they run out, creating geodesic hovercraft, bugs, spaceships. They teach the possibilities of geometry, and anything you make, even a little 2yo cube, looks beautiful. Since these things tend to hang around, it is nice when the creations are as good as sculpture.

4. Zoob
Zoob comes with directions: totally unnecessary. Zoob is a set of plastic ball-and-socket joints that can be combined in various ways. They are easy to snap together (though hard for little ones to pry apart). If Duplo and Magna-Tiles suggest houses and vehicles, Zoob suggest creatures, manipulable skeletons that can switch from insects to dinosaurs to men in just a few clicks. I’ve been amazed to walk into my son’s room and find the floor suddenly covered in alien beings. The largest is always the leader, simplistic babies in the corner, and something new being hatched out of the pile in the center of the room. Because the individual pieces are small (but not so small as to be choking hazards), the range of possible scale is terrific. As with these other toys, you can watch the progression of your children’s imagination through the increasing number of possibilities they see in the toy.

I made it. Yesterday was my 100th PicFrame. Today I am going to rest, though I am thinking about a new assignment, and open to suggestion.

What did I learn?

Some days are bursting, some days are not. I tend to alternate between days at my desk, getting to 1000 words (the average length of one of my draft essays), and days out and about, going to sites, traveling between Cambridge and New York, visiting parks. Some PicFrames are packed with interesting architecture, and some are made of up things around my house. But I enjoyed looking for those patterns, joined by theme (City) or print (Marimekko) or color (red). It was even more fun to look for patterns in other people’s houses (green).

Some days I only saw one thing I wanted to photograph. Those desperate days, however, provoked more creativity on the app end of things, resulting in pinwheels and stutter-steps that were as interesting as a 3D effect. Monkeying with its frames, rules and effects was also instructive, and inspired my 6yo to make PicFrames too (albeit with more radical image manipulation, and nonsense captions).

Old is OK. I felt guilty when I went to the archives, online, in books, but the response to those PicFrames was often more enthusiastic than to some other experiments.

Even when you set your own homework, you still feel guilty. So I will confess to you: I cheated on the assignment 1.5 times. One Friday I spent all day on the train, when the day before I’d seen a number of amazing modernist sights. I was tired and grumbly, so I posted Breuer the day after I photographed it. One Sunday I photographed some things around my house, then happened upon a better visual idea. I used them the next day, but felt too silly photographing them over again.

Above all else, the exercise confirmed what my eye is drawn to. Mexico City had it in spades, but bright hues, contrast graphics, and intense texture are also to be found up north. I felt on my toes the whole time, which refreshed some commonplace walks, and inspired me to take detours. Whatever visual task I give myself next, it has to provide the same prompting to look at my life a little more closely, if not necessarily in squares.

During the conversation, she shares some best practices and sheds perspective on her journey to becoming an influential architectural critic, journalist, and social media maven with over 10.4k Twitter followers to date.

Though not explicitly a designer, Lange’s work takes a critical eye to the built environment, design culture, and our fields’ positions relative to contemporary societal concerns. This work is executed with such care and precision that she is often invited to speak at prestigious institutions and write for some of the most respected publications in the world. And, even with such accolades as these, Alexandra manages to be unpretentious, approachable, and generous enough to sit down and talk with the likes of us.

Take a listen above to see what we mean, and make sure to explore some of Alexandra’s top resources below. Consider her challenge posed to Team Section Cut – GAME ON!

Among those resources: Lydia DePillis’s Tumblr 100 Percent Men, Ada Louise Huxtable’s On Architecture, Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine. No excuses, especially since a used copy of On Architecture is a mere one cent.

In January, I made fun of Bjarke Ingels’s Instagram. After my article was published his Instagram went dark for a few weeks, but then it started up again. When I checked in on it in May, these were his last few posts: blurry photo of New York City from a plane, BIG’s LEGO House project rendered in LEGO, construction selfie, Bjarke and Martha. So basically, more of the same.

The only signs that he might have listened to me were a newspaper clipping from his childhood, heralding the first design competition he won, and a nice, clear photograph showing the first few completed stories of his building on West 57th Street. The first nods to an Instagram hashtag game known as Throwback Thursday (#tbt) – everyone posts embarrassing photos from their youth – the second provided insider news on one of his projects from an angle most of us can’t get. They show understanding of how social media can be used for conversation, rather than simply self-promotion, and how it might illuminate the life of the working architect in useful ways.

As I said then: you don’t want to be boring, do you? I’m going to use my ten minutes to explain why architecture needs social media, and to give you some ideas of ways to get started. It’s also supposed to be fun. If Twitter is a chore on your to-do list, you’re doing it wrong. Social media should have personality and playfulness, introduce you to new people and let you see new things. Let me try to explain how.

Why architecture needs social media.

Because people don’t understand you. What do architects do all day? Nobody knows, least of all your clients who probably think they pay you too much, when the opposite is true. Judging by the movie portrayal of architects, they are men, who are sensitive, who design pretty houses, who wear white shirts and carry rolls of drawings. Social media offers an opportunity to show and tell more. Not your lunch, but the sketch you made at your meeting. Not your shoes, but the new paving that just went in. Whether with pictures on Instagram or words on Twitter, you can provide signposts.

Because you are at your desk all day long. Many architects spend all day at their desks, just like writers. For you, social media can become the water cooler. What are people talking about, not just in architecture, but in culture? What are people buying, making, cooking for dinner? You need to stay connected to wider streams, streams that are broader than the architecture magazines you subscribe to. Your family needs you to have good ideas for meals as well as flashing details. Social media has the right mix of high and low to allow you to dip in.

Because architecture should be part of the conversation. Which conversation? All of them: news about cities, news about culture, news about Mad Men. (I laughed out loud on the Sunday when one character gave another an Erector Set, “America needs engineers,” he said.) Architects have a specific lens on all sorts of projects and prospects for the future, and by meeting their audience where they are – hanging out on Twitter, posting vintage architecture photos on Instagram – you can add that perspective.

What architects could share on social media.

1. Self-promotion. I know, I said you shouldn’t do this, but really, you shouldn’t do this too much. One quarter to one third of your posts should be about the lectures you give, the awards you win, the projects you complete. Try to make those posts useful: link to the video or the live feed, to new construction photos, to the list of everyone who won. People wouldn’t follow you if they weren’t at least somewhat interested in what you do.

2. Influences. What building did you make a pilgrimage to on your last vacation? What new design book did you buy? What classic text are you listening to on audiobook while you draw up that set? Do you have a real inspiration wall? An inspiration tote bag? All of these are interesting to other people – really – and tell us more about what goes in to your design. It’s also a chance to tip your hat to what you consider excellent in other fields. Or even your own. It would be nice if architects could compliment each other.

3. Details. When I started talking about architects using Instagram a friend joked that her feed would just be handrail details. Every time she goes to a museum, a park, a transit hub, she is checking out the hardware and the miter joints. Well, I responded, that would be a great Instagram feed. Obsessions, rendered in artistic photos, are just what Instagram was made for. It’s no sillier than bouquets or fancy coffee foam. Show us the city (or the country) through the eyes of the architect. It’s funny what you can become known for. I get tagged for anything Marimekko, and outrageously bright floors. What aesthetic choice would you like to be known for?

4. The critique. What needs improvement? Show us that sad public space, that neglected modern monument. Think about what architecture can do and show us where it is needed. Maybe such a project is beyond your scope right now, but by sharing it, thinking about it, making digital connections, you may be able to expand your territory.

5. Protest. We make architecture. Can we also protect it? Architects need to be out in front articulating what can be saved and why. Social media gives you a platform in the larger marketplace of ideas to share what’s important over the long term.