By Howard Cohen, The Miami Herald

July 27--Like so many young people weaned on images in the media, Auramaria Carvajal says her dream house "must have a big closet," and so she's built one.

Etched in peach-colored walls, the closet is so impressive that it connects to the bedroom, bathroom and nearly the entire rear of the house. It would almost certainly be the envy of the fictional Carrie Bradshaw from Sex in the City.

It took Auramaria a mere two weeks to design and build a properly scaled replica of her dream house, set in New Jersey, where she was raised.

Auramaria is 14, heading into ninth grade at Hialeah Gardens' Mater Academy in August, and though she will have to wait a while to move into her dream house, she -- along with about 60 other youths age 8 to 14 -- has learned a lot about what it takes to be an architect.

They all enrolled in Architects in the Making (AIM) Summer Camp, a joint venture by the Miami chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Arizona-based Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

The free camp program, held at the University of Miami's School of Architecture on the Coral Gables campus, includes hands-on instruction, field trips and visits from experts in the field.

"What we wanted to do with the program is to bring an awareness of architecture to kids, perhaps something they could work in," said camp director Rick Ruiz, a board member of AIA Miami.

The camp, which concludes Friday with an awards presentation at Glasgow Hall on the University of Miami campus, featured two weeks of instruction in drawing, lectures and tours of architecturally significant landmarks like Miami Beach's Art Deco District.

In one room, children learned how to use computers to design super buildings from scratch; in another, kids were asked to design their dream house; and in still another, a group was tasked with designing homes to aid in the reconstruction of Haiti.

Cameron Cope, 12, a seventh-grader at Herbert A. Ammons Middle School in Southwest Dade, figures his design for a family home in Haiti is perfect.

"It's raised off the ground -- what if it floods or a hurricane comes off the coast?" he said.

His project called for designing a home for a family of four to six in the island nation. The master bedroom upstairs is ingeniously separated from the rest of the rooms, and that's because, as a kid himself, he knows that "parents complain when we make too much noise."

Elliett Baca, 10, a fourth-grader at Mater Academy, along with Cristina Holder, 10, and Isabela Bonds, 8, both from Coral Gables' St. Theresa Catholic School, worked on computer programs used to design huge structures like the proposed World Trade Center replacement, instructor Mark Rothman said.

"It's fun, you get to express yourself and get to learn new things every day," Cristina said.

"You get to be creative," Elliett added.

Isabela agreed: "It's a good experience." With the click of a button, four walls on Isabela's screen suddenly take shape, colored in brick.

"When you see what some of these kids have done in the first year, some have it in them and have the skill if it's nurtured," said Ruiz, a native of Hialeah.

The camp is funded by the city of Hialeah, the city of Miami Park and Recreation Department, the University of Miami, and the Coral Gables Museum, along with several other sponsors.

"We come up with the concept, but how to use the inside space, how to limit the size, how that's divided up, that's completely up to them," said team leader Shawn Rorke-Davis, who works with advanced students.

"They learn to draw a floor plan to scale that any architect could read," she said.

"I'm a big believer that summer learning loss is really an issue, even for well-educated, upper-income kids. These kids are often the opposite of that," Rorke-Davis said. "They are sitting around all summer stimulating their minds in a wide variety of subjects. Architecture includes science, math, art and public speaking. They are self-propelled rather than me dragging them down a path."

And so Alex Byrne, 12, a South Miami Middle School seventh-grader, came up with a novel idea for his dream home -- an underwater house on a lake in the Georgia mountains.

Alex clues you in on a little secret about his modern-day Atlantis, though.

"This might not be my dream house -- I might be scared to live there," he said. Still, the house he imagined comes complete with air-tight, wraparound windows, waste-treatment and water-filtering facilities. Why waste a drop?

Alex said he wants to be an architect or a scientist one day. At an adjacent desk, Gage Plotner, 10, of Miami Beach, also had the environment in mind with his energy-efficient home that features photovoltaic material on its roof.

"It's not exactly my dream house," he said, but that's only because this budding architect said he'd like his real home someday to be twice the size.

Meantime, Auramaria has decided what she would like to be: an interior designer.

"I want to design my own home," she said. Her project's living room is bright and airy, with large windows. "I like reading, so the living room is not closed up -- it's a place I can look out into nature."

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