The Human Bug Hotel

Furzedown Primary School's year 6 class (11 year olds) have been doing a series of Architecture workshops investigating

• structure and materials,  
• space, form and light, 
• scale and proportion,
• design narrative and story-line,
• response to a chosen site and its environment.

The workshops were carried out with a sequence of lessons following the methodology documented in our 'Architecture for Kids' post, which include a progress of design sessions developed around structure, drawing, making and building.

Designing spaces: 
Models representing individual spaces developed from
the children's design narratives and story-lines.

With the brief of creating a space (pavilion, shelter or den) one design that stood out was for a kid-sized human bug hotel.  This clever design played with scale and proportion, shrinking children down to the scale of a bug to experience life in a bug hotel.  It also was a very simple solution to a design proposal requiring only a few components to make it work.

Drawing in 3D is a skill. 
Here axonometric paper was used to recreate the designs in drawn format,
to understand how this drawing technique works,
and to develop the designs with annotations and details.

The bug hotel chambers were cut from plastic water barrels from Smiths of Forest Dean with the acrylic domed lenses from Project Plastics.  The class assisted with fabrication, cutting the barrels with a jigsaw and drilling holes for the fixing points which were make with bolts, washers and wing nuts.

One very simple and playful design to create a kid-sized bug hotel;
creating an environment where children can imagine what life might be like for
insects living in an environment of vegetation and greenery. 

Building the human bug hotel.
Measuring, cutting, drilling, bolting and assembling.

The assembly was placed next to a willow frame which had lots of foliage to dress around the chambers which made it look in place.  To add to the fun, the willow frame had a space inside where the children used to play.  The resultant human bug hotel gave a project where kids could engage in an insect-world, observing more bug-like kids in the play space habitat beyond.

Experimenting with the spaces of the human bug hotel.