An annual mass 'fort building' event is going on now which for years has brought smiles uncountable to the faces of children visiting in Austin, Texas.

Hosted at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and Botanic Gardens, Fortlandia is a celebration of childhood fort building, in which architects create different forts to tickle the imagination of young and old.

Building forts is a universal childhood experience. Whether out of blankets and pillows, sticks and leaves, or refrigerator boxes, it is the pinnacle of big picture creativity.

Now open until January 31st, Fortlandia 2022 features 8 forts built by professional architects and artists arrayed along a nature trail for kids, so they can explore and pretend to their heart's content.

Color Space Architecture from San Marcos, for example, contributed 'The Critter Stack', which creates a play and meet and greet environment for kids and forest critters.

"By integrating natural stacked materials within and on the installation, The Critter Stack invites Fortlandia attendees to consider life forms smaller than themselves and to take a closer, respectful look at the wilderness that we can help support outside our front doors."

"Children are also invited to crawl right up and into the installation and imagine what it is to become a little critter themselves," they added.

Designer Jodi Bade made 'The Critter Cafe', which is pulled by a vintage garden tractor and filled with child-safe kitchen equipment for that most persistent of childhood fancies, tea time. Watch her video showing the remarkable detail on the inside.

For the 2020 exhibition, Perkins & Will built a fort entirely of bamboo tubes, allowing kids' tireless knees to crawl them about inside an enclosed yet natural space.

Each year since it debuted in 2018, up to ten different forts each year dot a 16-acre stretch of the Texas Arboretum (part of the Botanic Gardens), with majestic trees framing the model forts.

Before starting their journey to the secret hideouts in the woods that most of us only dreamed of, kids can pick up their "Passforts" to document their adventures, map the fort locations, along with the animals and plants they find along the way-and the friends they've made-and compare notes for the next year.

WATCH one family's adventure in 2019…

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