As part of their Art curriculum, Furzedown Primary School in South West London has been running workshops on Architectural Design. This is to help the children's’ knowledge and understanding of materials, structure, colour and aesthetics, and how they can be applied physically into built assemblies. Architectural design is not a subject normally taught in schools before college, but it is a subject that is very relevant to everyone. We all live in the built environment which is heavily managed with lots of design interventions. Individually and collectively these affect us directly, so why not bring architectural design in to the classroom?
This is what they have been doing:
Experiments
with structure
The children have been learning about
structures in nature and man-made objects, and understanding how some
applications found in nature have been applied to the engineered products we
use today. Forces and their applications
were explained and some unconventional structural solutions were also examined.
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| Structures in nature, products and architecture |
The children were given sets of construction
toys with challenges to create the tallest, largest or longest spanning
structure, to put some of the theory to the test. It is when they were hands-on with the kits
that value of structural triangles over conventional squares and rectangles really
became apparent.
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| Experimenting with structural toys and kits |
Experiments
in drawing
Graphically representing your design proposals
in a format that can be universally read is a bit of a skill. Class lessons looked at plans, sections and
elevations, and how they could be used to construct a 3D axonometric.
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| Representing design with drawings, images and concept models |
Challenges for the children included tasks
ranging from ‘draw your ideal room’ to ‘design a fantastic building of the
future’. Their imaginations did not let
their work down and the confidently produced results were full of drawn
articulation and annotation to describe the proposals.
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| Putting down ideas in 3D with axonometric paper |
Architectural
design and model making
An introduction to architectural design looked
at materials, colour, light transparency, form and how different types of
spaces might affect how we feel.
 |
| Some design considerations |
A range of freely available materials was
gathered for making models with. This
included cardboard tubes and sheets, string, pipe cleaners and scooby-string,
coloured translucent plastic film and lollypop sticks etc. With their recent understanding of how
structures perform and ideas of spaces, the children set to work inventing
prototypes for an installation of their choice for the school playground. Ideas ranged from places to hang out with
friends in to sculptural designs, to activity spaces.
 |
| Experimenting with design |
Adventures
in building
The series of lessons gave enough time to trial
the assembly of one of the prototype designs.
This was a bit of a risk because things that work in model form often
behave differently when scaled up. The
selection of materials had been planned so that everything used for the prototypes
had a corresponding larger version for a full-size assembly. Cardboard tubes and sheets transferred to
carpet roll tubes and estate agent boards, string became rope and coloured
ribbon became fabric strips etc.
 |
| Making structures on a larger scale |
The prototype selected became the ‘Random Funky
Festival Pavilion’ and a place where much of year 5 could sit and eat their
lunch at and debate important matters at break time.
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| The Random Funky Festival Pavilion designed and built by class 5S |
Skills
learnt
As well as mentally gaining an
understanding on how structure and design works through listening and applying,
the children also practiced activities which helped with their motor
skills. The making of both small and
large structures challenged their cutting, making and assembly skills. As part of the design work the children investigated
folded card structures and modular origami, which took some time and attention
to master.
To this end, I am confident that the series
of lessons into architectural design helped the children to progress in line
with the School’s aspirations for learning development. Hopefully it opened their imaginations to a
new area of design exploration and built confidence. The work was also designed to complement the
National Curriculum in England for design and technology programmes of study,
which calls for a process of designing and making using a set of skills based
around maths, science, engineering, computing and art.
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