Netley Primary School (Camden) Ancient Greeks Project- Little Architect

’Who am I? Who do I want to be?’ Topic: Ancient Greeks Netley School, Year 4 group. 74 Stanhope St, NW1 3EX. Camden London. 2016

Netley Primary School is a happy, rights respecting school. Everyone takes steps to better themselves and their community, as they become responsible, global citizens. The school is set within Netley Campus, a state of-theart learning environment for children and adults. We have 450 children, including Woodlands, an outstanding centre for children with Autism.

Little Architect is an educational programme for teaching architecture in the UK primary schools led by the Architectural Association School of Architecture. We teach to understand architecture to enjoy and be critical with the city and all its complexity. Teaching school children how to observe and discover the wonders of the built environment and its future, will open their minds towards a more creative way of thinking and prepare them to play a committed role as global citizens. We are embedding architecture in the existing national curriculum, designing tailor made workshops to cover, through architecture and art, any of the statutory topics present in the academic year. We use drawing as a simple and powerful communication tool.

Architectural Association Visiting School The Architectural Association was founded in 1847, and today operates a full-time undergraduate and graduate school with circa 800 students and 250 academic and administrative staff. The school is recognised as a worldwide leader in architectural education, with graduates that include many of the world’s leading architects, scholars, critics and educators. The Visiting School is a developing part of the AA’s overall academic programme focused on part-time studies. Currently there are in the region of 60 programmes (including Little Architect ) scheduled annually in the UK and approximately 30 countries worldwide.Â

YEAR 4 Project: Year 4 were planning to look at different architects and styles of architecture and how architecture today has been influenced by the ancient Greeks. Little Architect was invited to run a three sessions project with both Year 4 classes in the autumn term. The overall project that the school was running was called : “Who am I? Who do I want to be? Little architect decided to foster observation and commitment to the children´s built environment and teach about the legacy of ancient greek architecture in contemporary architecture and our cities today.

Day one 13th October: Introducing architecture in general Presentation 1: Introducing architecture and trying to engage them with the topic.

What do architects do & study? How do we design new and exciting buildings? as well as conveying that the study of architecture is a holistic and creative field of study linked to urban fauna,energy,transportation and people´s happiness.

Targets: To… -Fully understand what it means to be an architect and how architecture interact with us.

-Open children minds and engage them with careers in the creative, design and construction field.

-Be articulate and to start expressing ideas about design, shape, materials, purpose.

We discussed: The role of architecture in the built environment and the advantages of working in a field, which is both creative and practical.

Task: Children draw a house before and after our presentation. We highlighted the need to be creative and facts related to living in London: overpopulation and density in the near future. ’

Who am I? Who do you want to be?’ Topic: Ancient Greeks

Train stations

Universities

Thematics parks

Bridges Markets Libraries Town Halls Hotels

Bus station Insects Playgrounds Old Castles Stadiums Trees Art Galleries Houses Birds Cinemas

Schools

Swimming Pools

Shops

Animals

People Hospitals Skyscrapers Police Stations Flats

Restaurants

Museums Tube stations Mosques Flowers Churches Banks

Parks Toys shops Fire stations Airports

Factories

Pubs

Theatres

Offices

The Eames-B.Fuller-Tomรกs Saraceno-Zaha Hadid

Buckminster Fuller

Thinking in others- Respecting other species -Sustainability and Ecology-Maths-History-Modeling-Hand Drawing- Cad Drawing‌

REHABILITATION-THINKING IN THE COMMUNITY- RESPECTING THE URBAN FAUNA-MORE FLATS FOR FAMILIES

FOSTERING URBAN WALKABILITY-LESS CARS-LESS POLLUTION

Day one 13th October: Introducing architecture in general Presentation 2: Observing architecture and feeling the city with all your senses.

Targets: To foster Observation, Mindfulness, Curiosity, Commitment, Engagement with the built environment.

We explained: How to observe and pay attention to details in buildings and the streets specially during their way to home and the way to school. We divided buildings into different elements such as roof, facade, windows, floor…etc.

Homework: Pupils had to take notes and make sketches answering questions like these ones: Which details in your way home did you enjoy the most? How did you feel in the street? safe or unsafe, why? Was it nice, Why? What was new to you when you looked with attention?

What kind of elements you don't like? Which materials did you find? did you find nature in your way to home? etc….

Who am I? Who do you want to be?’ Topic: Ancient Greeks

ROOF FACADE FLOOR

What do we find if...We

LOOK AT the ROOFS?

What do we find if...

We

LOOK AT the FACADE ?

What do we find if...

We

LOOK AT the FLOOR?

Use all your SENSES to enjoy the city!

1-Open up your eyes Look at everything around, above, below and in front of you!

Have fun, be curious,discover secrets, learn its history, learn about your neighbours.

3-Be critical Ask yourself if your city could be even better. Express yourself, be assertive.

4-Propose improvements Write letters or emails to your council, take pictures, draw a proposal, help in your community…be an active citizen

5-Tell your friends and parents to do the same!

Little Architect- AA School of Architecture- 36 Bedford Square- London WC1B 3ES- littlearchitect.aaschool.ac.uk -Twitter: @AAlittlearchi Facebook; Little Architect AA

Illustration : Dolores Victoria Ruiz Garrido, based on Yona Friedman “Holistic Vision” concept.

2-Enjoy your city

'Who am I? Who do I want to be?'

Myself+My borough Homework.

Be an archi-detective!

1-Observe and pay attention to details in buildings and streets during your walks (e.g: from home to school) 2- Take notes and make sketches about: Details that you enjoyed ( windows, materials, shapes) and feelings in the street ( public space) ( happy, sad, confused, scared, safe…)

Public space was very important for ancient greeks, pay attention to your mood and activities in the public space.

3- Make a list of buildings and places that you visit during the week and weekend: (eg: Shop, playground, library, mosque, church, cinema, theatre, swimming pool, your house, friends ´homes) Write down again details and feelings in relation to these buildings.

4- Did you find nature in your way to home, trees, animals or insects? Please, write down this too. We will learn how ancient greeks loved nature and landscapes.

What does your landscape look like?

Year 4 project: Myself+My borough. Topic: Ancient Greeks Day one: Introduction to architecture and cities

HOMEWORK

Day two 20th October: Learning from Greeks: Public space, Temples, Houses, Stoas, Theatres.

Learning from my friends "my" architecture and "my" city.

Presentation 3: Thirty minutes presentation about Greek architecture and types of buildings: Temples, Theatres, Stoas, Agora, Patios, Columns,Triglyphs and Metopes.

Target: To… Look at how they as individuals relate to buildings, and how they use the space or feel that the space impacts on who they are.

Discover the relevance of greek architecture and concepts such as democracy, freedom of speech, public space, education.

We discussed: Their findings from the previous week (homework) choosing some of the children to share their personal story and relationship with the built environment. In pairs, on the carpet, children asked to each other questions about their house, their streets, the park where they play, the transportation system that they use to come to the school, the animals (pets) or urban fauna that they have or meet in the way, the religion that they have, the temple that they visit, the food that they eat, the countries from where they are…Then they chose a building from ancient Greece to draw it and to draw themselves on it.

Task: To draw themselves inside or next to an ancient building from their choice.

Technique: Using orange paper and black felt-tips to draw in ancient greek style.

Visit to the British Museum: Children visited the the British Museum, the day prior to our lesson, thus we included some slides from its collection to reinforce what they learnt.

Main Buildings Temple Theatre Agora Palace House Stoa Gymnasium Tomb Tholos

Let´s draw ourselves surrounded by ancient greek architecture

Day three 2nd November. Greeks from the past to the future. Presentation 4: We showed contemporary versions of typologies that we had study in the previous lesson.

We focused on how greeks have influenced our cities and architecture today.

Target: To learn How architecture is in constant evolution and cities are transformed by multiple cultures and legacies.

How the old buildings today are built in different shapes and materials but the function is the same as more than 25 centuries ago.

How I am part of my city.

Task: They chose one ancient building and imagine and draw how it will look like in the future. We encouraged them to be very creative and transform the building as much as possible.

HOW do you IMAGINE a TEMPLE in the FUTURE? HOW do THEATRES look TODAY? Do WE have AGORAS today?

GYMNASIUMS,

How do they look like?

Could we find Modern THOLOS?

How did STOAS evolve?

How do PATIOS look today?

Our children said: Here are some of the quotes from the children in the last session, "Instead of doing it the old way, we need to try new ways" Hanan "There are lots of history and stories hidden in buildings!" Charlie "We have to be more imaginative" Nahid "We need more benches to sit on" Hashim "Architecture is about not just thinking about how to be creative but also how it will affect people" Fizzah "Imagination is key" Charlie "We need buildings with no pollution!" Fatah "We are experts now" Charlie

Our teachers said: Over the three workshops with Little Architect, the children received an excellent introduction to architecture. Little Architect tailored a series of workshops to fit with the work the children were doing at school on the Ancient Greeks and how they are still inspiring architects today. The work the children did with the Little Architect made architecture accessible and exciting. By the end of the sessions the children had been exposed to a vast array of bold and exciting buildings around the world, opening their eyes to just how imaginative and creative architecture can be.

The children came to school after the weekend, bubbling about how they had spotted design features they had been learning about in class in the buildings around where they live. The children were really enthused by the work they saw and were able to spot similarities between buildings and notice styles of architecture that were inspired by the past.

The children now know architecture is about more than just designing a building, but is about thinking about how people will use and interact with the space and coming up with creative solutions to problems. In the last session, the children commented that they felt like "they are now experts!"

I would highly recommend the Little Architect programme to other schools Tara Seton.

Year 4 Teacher

Little Architect Architectural Association School of Architecture UK Visiting School Twitter: @AAlittlearchi Facebook: Little Architect AA http://littlearchitect.aaschool.ac.uk/ T +44 (0)20 7887 4014 littlearchitect@aaschool.ac.uk visitingschool@aaschool.ac.uk Little Architect Team Dolores Victoria Ruiz Garrido, Director Maridia Kafetzopoulou Guest speaker in session 2 Team in Netley School: Tara Suton Year 4 Teacher Patricia Year 4 Teacher AA School of Architecture 36 Bedford Square London WC1B 3ES Little Architect Director: Dolores Victoria Ruiz Garrido AA Visiting School Director: Dr. Christopher Pierce

London October-November 2016