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Building Our City!

The first group of elementary architects!

After weeks of planning, designing, and drawing, we finally got a chance to start building! One third grader asked me every week, “Are we going to build the city today?” When the students arrived in class, they each got a foam core base with their floor plan affixed to the top, and a bag of “walls” labeled with letters.

Components for the airport

Using the floor plan drawings they created as a guide, the students labeled the spaces on the base, and then drew windows on their exterior walls if they wanted to add them.

The models are 1/8 scale (1/8″ = 1′-0″), just like our floor plans. Some students were surprised by the size of their models! This was a good lesson in scale. We discussed why the houses had walls that were much smaller than the airport or the school.

Finally, after all the models were assembled, it was time to lay out the city! The students worked together, using their city planning skills, to place each building. They also used drafting tape to designate roads.

Our completed city and elementary architects! Look closely for the building labels.

I am so proud of what the kids accomplished this session! I think I learned just as much as they did!

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Beginning Building Design

This week’s class was so exciting! We started designing buildings to put together our city. it’s looking like we will have a school, a hospital, a few stores and restaurants, an airport, a military base, and a couple of houses. 

  • One of our third graders designing a house
  • A fourth grade student designing a restaurant
  • One of our fifth graders discussing ideas

Using the planning technique of bubble diagrams, the kids started laying out their buildings based on the simple programs they chose. The programs list 5 – 6 spaces that are required, two adjacencies, and some exterior door and window requirements. 

Most of the kids added extra spaces to their designs. I love the creativity!

The bubble diagrams allow us to look at spaces in relationship to each other, both in terms of size and location. We can tell that our school cafeteria, for example, is larger than a classroom. The actual dimensions of the spaces are not yet figured out. 

A fifth grader drew a fantastic bubble diagram of a school

Next week we will begin to draw scaled floor plans of our designs. We may need to make some decisions about what extra spaces to eliminate in order to fit our buildings on their selected sites. 

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Our First Class at Elementary Architecture!

We had a great first class today! I asked the kids what they wanted to learn about architecture and got some really great responses – everything from, “is a triangle really the strongest shape?” and “I don’t really know what this class is about,” to “I want to learn how to draw houses better.”

Before we can start designing spaces, we need to lay the foundation, so to speak, of thinking in three dimensions. We will do this by using some basic measuring and drafting techniques to translate the built environment – in this case the classroom – into its basic 2-dimensional architectural drawings. This will help the kids understand what the lines on a drawings represent and help them to visualize their own creations!

The students learned how to use a tape measure and they worked in teams of two to measure some objects around the room. We even learned some tips to help estimate the size of a room if you don’t have a tape measure, or if your tape measure is too short (like ours were)! Hint: Ask your student how big the classroom floor and ceiling tiles are!

After looking at some floor plan examples and discussing the concept of scale, we started to draw a floor plan of the art room. We will finish it next week and move on to interior elevations to give height to our room.

We have so many fun things to do in the next 7 weeks!