Art education: children can lose themselves in art in this colourful educational labyrinth devised for LA's Getty Center.

Planning and construction of the Getty Center in West LA stretched out over 14 years (AR February 1998) and it has taken another seven to remodel the Roman Villa in Malibu, which will reopen to the public as a centre for the antiquities collection early next year. By comparison, the new Family Room in the J. Paul Getty Museum (within the Getty Center) was fast-tracked, but the 90sqm space was planned as meticulously as if it had been an entire institution. A hundred architects, artists and designers were invited to submit proposals. 'We wanted to get new ideas and fresh perspectives, rather than filter everything through our own thinking,' explains Peggy Fogelman, the Head of Education at the Getty. 'In the process, we educated ourselves.'

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The LA-based partnership of Hadrian Predock and John Frane developed the winning proposal and collaborated with the client to create a joyful experience that brings children and parents together. The architects understood that children are much more intuitive and open-minded than most adults, but can easily get bored by the restrictions and labels in art museums. Their goal was to break down barriers between different generations and plug into the Getty's varied collections, while offering an alternative to the monumental, monochromatic and timeless character of its buildings. By contrast, the Family Room is intimate, polychromatic and spontaneous, but it respects Meier's geometry, even as it tweaks his grid.

Starting with a simple diagram that was inspired by a carousel--a circle in the square--Predock Frane developed a multi-cellular structure, in which a key work from each of six collections (of painting, sculpture, drawing, illuminated manuscripts, photography and decorative arts) can be engaged. The tubular metal sculpture by Martin Puryear on the plaza is transformed into a game of attaching foam tubes in different configurations. James Ensor's painting Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889, provides an opportunity to make masks and add your own face to the crowded panorama. David Hockney's Pearblossom Highway, a photo collage of a desert highway, can be viewed through lenses set at different heights, which offer surprising vistas and a sense of how lenses change the way you see the world. An elaborate eighteenth-century French bed provides a retreat for younger children. A drawing and manuscript share the final enclosure.

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These five alcoves, their intense colours cued to the art works they contain, serve as a labyrinth to draw people in and get them involved with a specific work. The exterior of this Rubik's cube is clad in a seamless skin of stainless steel, which is cut away at the height of a small child, and generates reflections. Objects and images are embedded in the perimeter wall and can be glimpsed through peepholes set at different heights, and these serve as clues in a treasure hunt. The idea is to provoke curiosity and encourage visitors to view the originals in the circuit of exhibition pavilions. Child development experts, curators and teachers offered advice, but Hadrian Predock relied on his own four-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son to test the architects' ideas, and ensure that they worked for that age group.

All museums emphasise education as a way of building an audience and increasing their relevance to the communities they serve. The Getty has deeper pockets than most and provides a service few other institutions can match. It pays to bus in school groups and provides trained specialists to interpret works of art. Kids who have never been in an art museum before are riveted by the experience, lingering far longer than adults as they puzzle out the meanings of a single work.