Objective: This week was the first class, so we used the time to get to know each other and develop a relationship. We introduced the students to basic concepts about architecture and design. Kristin introduced the members of the design team as puzzle pieces so they could see how the different fields relate. The team showed slides which described the delicate system of timing involved in the process of design and construction. During the second half of the class we had the students draw their dream room so that they could begin to think about what was important to them. The teaching team introduced the idea of peaceful places
Activities: Design and Draw your 'dream room'.
New Vocabulary Introduced: architect, client, site, shelter, environment, engineers, landscape architect, interior designer, contractor, foundations, materials, interior design, structure, concrete slabs, plumbing, cavity walls, facade, non-symmetry, roofing, HAVOC, symmetry
Materials: Slides, architects tools, examples of work,
paper and pencil.
Objective: The purpose of this activity was to give students a hands on experience with structure. Important to the topic was the concepts of tension and compression.
Activities: Build a newspaper roll structure so that one student can inhabit it. Ask the students to roll sheets of newspaper into narrow tubes. Once each tube is rolled have them secure the roll in three places. Now the rolls can be designed and assemble to each groups creative idea. Newspapers are great because the will buckle under large compression loads and rip under too much tension (i.e.. if they are pulled too strongly). The challenge is to use these rolls to create a shelter for a single team member. After each group is through have them present what their designs and what they have learned. [image of newspaper structure]
Materials: Slides newspaper rolls, tape,
New Vocabulary: steel, concrete, tension compression, skeletal, column, foundation. beams, point load, walls, slab, frame, truss, space frame, arch keystone, vaults, dome, aesthetic, buttress, horizontal, vertical, cantilever.
Resources: AIE structures kit and the slides which accompany it.
Objective: The objective of this activity was to get students to begin to think about shelter and the relation of exterior to interior. We also discussed the importance of a peaceful feeling space. Scale became better understood when the students created doors and windows for their odd shaped rooms. (expand: color, shape, light, shade, warmth, cooling, balance)
Activities: Create peaceful rooms using odd shaped floor plans. Introduce the peaceful places with slides , photographs from magazines, or books. This might even relate to a story or novel students are reading in class (see week IV below) Ask them to compare each of the images or scenes from a story. You might ask them what colors do they find peaceful and then which they do not. You might call attention to how a space is decorated: is there a chair by a window, by a fireplace, or coupled with a sofa or other chairs to create a peaceful place. You might introduce pattern, shapes and materials to see if your class can notice how these elements combine to create a whole environment. Students were given an odd shaped cardboard floor plate and a sheet of paper with a 1/4 inch figure photocopied onto it. A page of furniture (in plan) and a page of windows and doors (in elevation) was given to each student to use as a kit of parts. They were to asked to create a peaceful room with the irregular shaped bases. Paper was used for the walls however, depending on your aged level cardboard may be used and the windows/doors may be cut out with an exact-o knife. This can be an excellent way to introduced the relationship between exterior and interior. You can take this a step farther by covering the rooms and bringing them to a window to show students how natural light will affect their peaceful places.
New Vocabulary Introduced: landscape, decoration, pattern, balanced, surroundings, shape, levels, interior, exterior, color, size, scale.
Materials: Cardboard floor plates, paper for walls, tape, window and door photocopies, scale figures.
Resources: Architecture in Education; A Resource of Imaginative Ideas and Tested Activities eds. Marcy Abhau, Rolaine Copeland, and Greta Greenberger.
Objective: The objective of this weeks activity is to gain an understanding of how the five senses experience a space. I also wanted the students to begin to understand what kink of feelings different spaces invoke. The use of color is important to this understanding.
Activities: In-school walking tour. Expand last weeks lesson to include all of the five senses. Ask the question which rooms feel larger: dark or light colored. This class was reading Behind the Secret Window (author) and the team ask the students to close their eyes and really listen so that they could create a picture in their minds of what the place was really like. They then were asked to record their feelings about the space in their journals and list how many of the five senses were evoked through the writing.
Next they took a walking tour of the school building. Some students will walk the halls, go to lunch, music and gym class without ever asking how lighting, color, shape and scale effect the way they feel in a place. This is also a great way to show how different spaces smell and sound.
New Vocabulary Introduced: comfort, location, temperature, atmosphere, ambiance, corridor, texture.
Materials: Colored paper, camera, imagination.
Resources: Jeffrey Becom. Mediterranean Color.
Abbeville Press: New York, 1990.
Objective: The object of this activity was to begin the project for exhibition at the Woodmere Art Museum. Students were placed in groups, this taught them to compromise and be flexible. This is the class where students began to consider the idea of a secret room and a secret window.
Activities: Form groups and begin laying out for Woodmere project Based on the students readings of the Anne Frank Diary they were going to be involved in an exhibition at the Woodmere Art Museum. The theme was "Hands Together for Peace. " They were to create a secret room with a secret window that they could go to in case they had to go into. This was to be a peaceful and comfortable place away from conflict. Students were assigned to groups of two. They were given a cardboard box and asked to design a room inside.
Materials: Cardboard boxes, wallpaper, craft supplies, glue, tape etc.
New Vocabulary: furnishings, skylight, clerestory, tinting.
Objective: The objective of this activity was to continue to work on building the models of the secret room. Special emphasis was placed on the differences between peace and conflict. It was our goal to make suggestions about any last minute design questions that arose.
Activities: Continue project for exhibition at Woodmere.
Materials: Cardboard boxes, craft supplies, glue, tape etc.
Link: visions of peace
Activities: The students built their secret rooms
Materials: Cardboard boxes, wallpaper, craft supplies, glue,
tape, etc.
Objective: The objective this week's activity was to get the students out into the neighborhood and begin to look at architecture through new eyes. The students had a lot of information under their belts and we figured that his was a good way for them to realize how much they had learned.
Activities: Neighborhood walk. The teaching team handed out a sheet of building elements that the students had to find while they were on the walk.
New Vocabulary Introduced: glass block, masonry, shingles, siding, slate, stucco, awning, balcony, bay window, chimney, corbel brick, deck, dormer, down spout, fence, lintel porch, railing.
Materials: Camera
Resources: Architecture in Education; A Resource of Imaginative Ideas and Tested Activities eds. Marcy Abhau, Rolaine Copeland, and Greta Greenberger.
Teacher: Gloria Safra
Architects: Kristin Mullaney
Student: Erich Auerswald III
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