On Monday I finished up teaching an after school art class for a group of 7-11 year-olds which was all about buildings and architecture. It was a great group, and they did some fabulous work.
We began by talking about elevation drawings - discussing their purpose, and the details that are included in them. The students created their own elevation drawings, showing scale, building materials, landscaping, etc. Next we discussed texture, and they created collages of buildings (and the surrounding landscape) using fabric, paper, and various recycled materials. Lastly, we discussed architectural models, looking at examples of models created for buildings by Zaha Hadid, OMA, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Frank Gehry, among others. The students then created their own models, focusing on landscaping, as well as building design. Again, we used an assortment of recycled materials for this project (I got a load of off-cut mat board and foam core from a local framing shop which came in handy for this activity).
For the last class, the students assembled their models as a city, incorporating model buildings (i.e. boxes painted white) that I’d created for my Re-imagining Towns and Cities class last October. I mounted and hung the students’ work from the previous classes, and their parents came at the end of the class for our closing exhibition.
