Alexandria Sturdevant
"The maple-wood blocks...are in my fingers to this day."
Frank Lloyd Wright
When I was younger, I can remember building life-sized castles, houses, and various other creations out of these colored, cardboard bricks that my mother had given to me and my brother. Children love to build and create all sorts of things and my brother and I were no different. However, this type of play is often undirected and not related to any sort of essential knowledge, which can often leave children feeling somewhat uninterested. However, bridging the idea of building and creating with a real world example produces students that are eager to learn and explore all of the new ideas at hand.
We began class by discussing what it means to be an architect and how buildings are designed by using models and drawing out their plans. I showed the students examples of shapes and forms and we identified and described them. Students were able to recall shapes and forms by relating them to an object that they were familiar with, such comparing a cylinder to a soda can or comparing our pyramid example to the ancient pyramids found in Egypt.
We then talked about the shapes that appear in buildings and structures by looking at various reproductions, such as John Kane’s Across the Strip and modular structures, such as Taos Pueblo in New Mexico and Habitat ‘67, designed by Moshe Safdie for the World’s Fair in Montreal.
We also discussed other types of buildings and structures, such as skyscrapers, houses, schools, and bridges. The students loved to use their previous knowledge of shapes and forms to describe the buildings and structures that they could find in the art works. They also identified different shapes and forms that they could find within the art room. One girl pointed to the bricks outside of the art room window and said, “Look! The bricks are rectangles! Our school is made of rectangles!”
Becoming Architects
First, I showed the students how to take on the role of an architect and create their own buildings. I arranged two handfuls of medium-sized, wooden blocks to create a staggering skyscraper and a couple of smaller buildings surrounding it. Then, I used a sheet of 9 x 12” drawing paper and colored markers to draw a picture of my buildings from observation. The students were amazed that I had created a building so tall and wanted to try their hand at being architects as well.
Several buildings fell and crumpled to the table as students worked, only to be rearranged into even more creative structures, such as chocolate and toy factories, intricate bicycle ramps, imaginary castles, and various other creations. The students then drew their favorite creations by looking carefully at the structures they had created. I walked around and took pictures of their buildings, which made the students feel very proud of their hard work.
This project was beneficial to all students in that they learned to think flexibly and realized that the designs that they created could be changed numerous times whether they fell apart or didn’t seem interesting enough. They also were able to recognize how shapes and forms are related to real world examples and that all designers, specifically architects for this lesson, consider all of these aspects when designing something new.
Friedrich Froebel
Unless you have taken a class in the history of art education, you may not know about
Friedrich Froebel and his set of twenty "gifts" and "occupations" for children invented in the 1830s to use in kindergarten. Froebel’s theories and gifts had significant influence on architects and artists as diverse as Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller, and Johannes Itten. Froebel introduced objects for play for young children that included balls, spheres, cubes, cylinders, rectangular blocks, tiles, lines, rings, and points in a defined sequence. Building architectural models with blocks owes much to Froebel’s gifts.
Objectives
Students will:
- demonstrate understanding that buildings can be designed from basic geometric forms.
- demonstrate understanding that architects are artists who design buildings and other structures.
- effectively build standing structures as models for architecture.
- record their structures through drawing and photography.
Alexandria Sturdevant was a student teacher at W.S. Ryan Elementary School in Denton, Texas, when she taught this lesson. Alexandria.sturdevant@gmail.com
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