2019 ARCH & ED

NATURE’S PLAYHOUSE 2019 ARCHITECTURE AND EDUCATION PROGRAM

BUFFALO ARCHITECTURE FOUNDATION

ARCHITECTURE + EDUCATION

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ARCHITECTURE + EDUCATION

CONTENTS PROGRAM TEAM / page 2 CURRICULUM / page 4 IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 1 / page 8 IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 2 / page 12 IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 3 / page 16 IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 4 / page 20 IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 5 / page 24 IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 6 / page 28 IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 7 / page 32 IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 8 / page 36 IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 9 / page 40 IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 10 / page 44

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TEAM 7 SCHOOL NAME: 37 FUTURES PREP CLASSROOM AGE: 8 TEACHER: BRIDGET JAKUBOWSKI PROFESSIONAL VOLUNTEERS: TIERRA BARNES, RUSSELL ROBERTS STUDENT: ALTHEA SENO STUDENT: JAIDON RAMIREZ ZENO

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ARCHITECTURE + EDUCATION Picture showing the final production day of Nature’s Playhouse. (descriptions from top left to bottom right)

BRIDGET JAKUBOWSKI (not pictured) is a third grade teacher at PS 37 Marva J. Daniel Futures Preparatory School.

Spending the last 12 years in elementary education, Bridget helps students ignite their intellectual curiosity, and fosters a love for life-long learning and achievement. Bridget continues to champion excellence and innovative learning experiences in partnership with family and community; including ARC+ED. When she is not planning exciting lessons for her kiddos, you can find Bridget practicing yoga, meditation, and shopping!

RUSSELL ROBERTS is a recent graduate from the University at Buffalo (UB) with his Master’s degree in Architecture working in the professional field. Russell works at the firm of Kideney Architects located in downtown Buffalo. He is on the path of becoming a licensed architect. Some of the projects that he has been a part of are the renovation work of the Statler Building’s facade, renovation of the Williamsville schools, and the Niagara County SPCA. While attending UB, he participated in the reconstruction of the GRoW Home on UB’s South Campus as well as being an assistant teacher for Structures 1 and 2. He joined the ARC+ED program to help teach students about the profession of architecture and to get back to teaching students; something that he enjoyed while attending UB. JAIDON RAMIREZ ZENO studies architecture at the University at Buffalo.

He is currently a member of the material culture research group and has a second focus on urban planning. Some of his most important accomplishments so far are being a firefighter in his home town, participating in habitats for humanity, and having been able to visit 7 different countries in Europe.

In the future he hopes to create buildings that encourage community interaction and creates areas in which all people regardless of race, age, ethnicity, etc., could engage with new cultural experiences. Some of his hobbies include basketball, sketching, traveling, and exploration.

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He participated in ARC+ED program in order to create a difference in students lives and to encourage them that they could accomplish anything they want to if they put their mind to it.

ALTHEA SENO is a recent undergrad graduate for architecture at UB, currently enrolled to participate in the Inclusive Design program for graduate school. Having worked for 3 years with a home improvement company and with clients during her study abroad trip to Costa Rica, she understands the importance of design within a community. She plans on bringing what she’s learned about design one day to help the communities in the Philippines, where she grew up and still visits from time to time. She hopes to guide the kids to open their creative minds and to create fun ways of integrating architecture within their core subjects. When she’s not studying or completing her projects, she’s out designing fun room DIY’s, taking nature walks, doing yoga, and going through Pinterest for more exciting ideas!

TIERRA M. BUSH is a practicing architectural and interior designer for Kideney Architects. She graduated from UB architecture with her masters and SUNY Buffalo State with a bachelors of Fine Arts in Interior Design. With 5 years of experience working in both development and architecture & design firms, it provides Tierra a thorough understanding of the impact of design on everyday life. From designing healthcare, educational, and multi-family projects, Tierra has made it her mission to help improve the quality of one’s life through design. Her goal for Arch+Ed is to let kids know that they could use their imagination to learn in alternative ways.

When she’s not designing cool projects, she’s out seeing the world, completing DIY projects for her home, or exploring iconic architecture around Buffalo.

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PROGRAM CURRICULUM

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o matter the outcome of the project, it was our objective to always encourage positive traits and promote self esteem within the students. It was also the teacher’s objectives to make sure that students are engaging productively as a whole or as an individual. The BPS (Buffalo Public School) goal that we’ve chosen as a group was that, “All students will demonstrate the ability to think logically, critically, and creatively, including processes for inquiry, reflection, problem posing, problem solving, and decision making.”

Even if we had a vision for the outcome of the project, we were prepared to work with the students in anyway possible in order to achieve the goals and objectives.

To introduce architecture into their core subjects, we decided that their end project will be a Nature’s Playhouse. By introducing the importance of the primitive hut in correspondence with nature, we’re allowing the connection of architecture to shine within their history and science subjects.

The objective was to not only make an architectural connection with nature, but to show the students that architecture surrounds them within their environment and everyday life. It was to also show them early architecture to emphasize the difference in development compared to

this day and age. Some major key words we aimed for to help them with the curriculum was architecture, built environment, hut, column, capital, structure, material, and ornament. All components to help with the creation of their version of the primitive hut.

The hut consists of four “columns” as the base and includes a roof structure. Each piece was painted by the students for a more aesthetically pleasing project. We’ve also decided that the students themselves will represent the ‘capital’ of a column. Then they decorated their hut with the different projects they’ve accomplished throughout the curriculum. The way the hut was designed was to purposely allow the students to be able to fit underneath it if they wished.

To accomplish the final project we had a total of 9 classes that consisted of a different activity each day. We create different lessons each day for them to learn a variety of material and vocabulary. At the end of it, we give them an activity so they could physically understand what we were explaining just minutes before. During the early stages, the activities were designed to teach the students the basics of structure, along with the different ways to create it and relate it to the primitive hut. During final production mode, they began different projects that were all types of pieces which soon became Nature’s Playhouse.

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IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 1 OCTOBER 9, 2019 Attendance in classroom: 14/16

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hat is architecture?

When we first arrived to the classroom the students had prepared a sign writing down what they initially believed architecture was.

It was a nice introduction to the lesson for the day as they were going to be introduced the definition of architecture and what it is an architect can do.

Today was the day they were also getting introduced to the meaning of the ‘built environment’. The students were shocked as to how much architecture influenced their everyday lives and how much they are surrounded by it, besides actual buildings.

To make sure they were engaged throughout the presentation, we added fun interactive questions like, “which one would you rather live in?” This question was just an example showing them how architecture can be seen differently within everyone. They were great at participating and asking questions and were curious about the images on the slides.

They learned other vocabulary words during this first lesson like precedent, creativity, design, and most importantly, structure. To introduce structure we related it to their skeletal system. For example, to quote our presentation: “Your skeletal system helps support the body much like structure supports a building!”

It was important that the students grasped the concept of structure, as this was the basis for the final product of the hut they would be producing. They did a wonderful job asking questions and comprehending the different ideas of what structure entails.

The activity we set up for them to understand the idea of structure was having a Tallest Tower Contest. The rules were that the structure that they would create out of graham crackers, pretzel sticks, and marshmallows would have to stand on its own. The students were put into groups of two to work together and share the material to create their structures.

It was great seeing the different approaches the students used to creating their structures. Some stacked all three material while others only used two out of the three to develop their ideas.

Nonetheless, the outcome of this lesson was positive because they each saw how other groups approached it and got a sense of different ideas of how they could potentially create a structure next time.

In the end, the students were very productive and had a lot of fun being able to experiment and take what they’ve learned during our presentation to make their ideas come to life. They worked well together and couldn’t wait to take home and eat their creations! At least we got some good pictures before they ate their structures.

-‘What is Architecture?’ Sign: The students all wrote down their thoughts on what they believed architecture was before our lesson.

-The ‘stacking’ method created by a group using all three materials.

-The ‘connection’ method created by a group only using marshmallows and pretzels.

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STUDENT QUOTE “Architecture is building a city that people like!”

Picture showing Russell (left) and Jaidon (right) helping Wonder and Elias on their different methods of structure.

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IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 2 OCTOBER 16, 2019 Attendance in classroom: 16/16

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or this lesson, the students were introduced to the correlation between architecture and nature. We first did a recap on structure, because it was essential to know that to introduce this lesson. The students did well on providing information that they’ve learned last class. We provided a small history lesson on how technology didn’t exist back then to create modern material. We explained how people used to rely on nature in order to create their homes.

‘Huts’ were introduced today. We emphasized the idea that the hut was an example of the relationship between early architecture and nature and how it was the basis for architecture for years to come. They were interested to see the types of huts and how they differed from one another.

The ‘column’ was also a strong vocabulary term that the students learned during this lesson. They did a great job relating a building’s column to a natural column (the tree trunk). They got the connection fairly quickly and were impressed that people used large, natural material like tree trunks to create their huts. We explained the tipi, huts with four columns like a house, stacked huts, etc. They were reminded of the different creations they made themselves during the first lesson to emphasize the different structural methods.

During the end of the presentation we introduced the roof and how roofs have

different structures as well. They grasped that natural material was a strong component in creating these huts.

Materials like wood, animal skin, straw, and leaves were just examples of what would help protect people from natural elements like wind, sun, and rain.

After the students learned about different structural elements in a hut, and how nature was a big factor in creating them, they then learned about structural elements that could be found in nature.

To emphasize that structure/architecture is found all around them, they collected leaves and embossed them in color to show the structure behind a leaf. They were excited to use all kinds of colors to see what their leaf structure would turn out to look like.

It was a fun activity, and instead of doing only the two that we had asked for, most of them made more because of the cool outlines that each leaf structure created.

Photo showing Isaiah’s different leaf structures experimenting with different shades of blue.

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STUDENT QUOTE “A column holds up the roof material!”

Photo showing Santino’s leaf embossing.

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Photo showing Justin’s leaf embossing.

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IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 3 OCTOBER 23, 2019 Attendance in classroom: 14/16

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o start the lesson we did a recap on how nature related to architecture from lesson two. They also did great on explaining the huts and what they’ve learned from the last lesson.

During this lesson they learned the importance of material in relation to architecture. We explained how it is important for architects to study materials so they know which one best fits their design. The students related the lesson to materials they saw in the classroom and why it was important to know how a material functions in order to place it in the correct spot.

Their previous lessons on nature and material prepared them for the next lesson they were going to receive during this third session. During this lesson they learned the importance of ‘ornament’.

They learned that ornament was like decoration and that people use inspiration from nature to make ornament in any design. The students then went around the classroom naming all the ‘ornament’ they could find, showing us that they grasped the concept of ornament.

We combined natural material with material study to introduce their next project. For this lesson they created their own natural ornaments to add to their hut.

They took grids and a variety of flowers to create whatever design they envisioned. They

created different patterns, some created their initials, and others decided to go the spontaneous route with whatever they thought looked best.

At the end of it, the flowers were then hot glued to stay attached to the grid and a ribbon was added to be able to hang on the hut’s roof. The ornaments will make beautiful addition to the huts.

-The first picture shows a student on the left using a pattern while on the right, they chose to place the flowers wherever their heart desired.

-The second shows Jaidon and Jo’Mier laughing and cutting out flowers for the class.

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-The last shows Tierra helping the students

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STUDENT QUOTE “I want to be an architect! My favorite subject is science now!”

This photo is showing the end result of the ornaments the students created.

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IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 4 NOVEMBER 6, 2019 Attendance in classroom: 14/16

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oday was definitely the messiest lesson of the curriculum. During this lesson, they had their final presentation.

This presentation was on the Primitive Hut. We recapped on what they’ve learned about structure and the reasoning behind the tallest tower contest. The students remembered that the pretzel sticks resembled tree trunks and how they work as columns. We then recapped everything they’ve learned about the primitive hut and summarized the aspects of what it entails.

We asked the students what they believed the strongest material was for the hut’s structure. They knew right away that it was wood because of their previous lessons. They knew that it was the strongest element in nature that people found.

Today the students experimented with celery and peanut butter to play with a hut’s structure one last time before they began their final project. They were told to create whatever primitive hut they chose and worked in groups in order to do so.

It was probably one of their most favorite lessons as it was a fun activity to summarize everything they’ve learned on the structure and the primitive hut. It was definitely messy but they enjoyed playing around with how far they can get with the peanut butter.

Photo of Kristyn, Iyana, and Isaiah with their celery huts.

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STUDENT QUOTE If you only had your hands, would you be able to break a tree?

“Only if you were the hulk!”

Andrae showing us the result of her hard work!

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Althea with Za’Den, Ja’Hiem, and Justin helping with their Tipi celery hut.

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IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 5 NOVEMBER 13, 2019 Attendance in classroom: 11/16

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lot of the students weren’t in attendance today, but because it was the start of final production, we had them working right away. We started with the simple activities so the students who weren’t in attendance wouldn’t feel left out when it came to other pieces necessary for the hut.

Today they started painting elements of the roof in different groups while the rest started drawings. They were told to draw anything they wanted whether it was nature, their favorite hut, favorite building, or anything they related to architecture.

These drawings would then be cut out by the students and glued onto the columns once they were ready.

Like mentioned, today was an easy day, the students did an amazing job with their drawings and had a fun time being able to express their creativity.

-Photo showing Za’Den, David, and Isaiah painting the roof’s structural elements.

-The next two photos show the class drawing whatever they wanted.

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STUDENT QUOTE “I want to be a police officer and architect!”

Photo showing Russell helping Iyana, Wonder, and A’Niya painting the roof’s structure.

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IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 6 NOVEMBER 20, 2019 Attendance in classroom: 14/16

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oday Beth Tauke came into the classroom to help and see the amazing progress the students have made. It was their second day of production.

Beth did a small recap on columns and the students were very engaged and productive during today’s session. They had a lot of fun during the recap.

During this session the students got to make 3D flowers to place onto the columns.

They experimented with different colors of construction paper and the adults each helped them with different methods of constructing these 3D flowers.

The students had so much fun drawing all types of flowers and transforming them from 2D to 3D. The flowers ended up looking amazing and will look even better once they are placed on the columns themselves. This lesson was another example of material and natural elements that can be placed on the primitive hut. It showed them the 3D aspects that came with making a hut.

Photo of Beth having fun and recapping columns with the students.

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STUDENT QUOTE “Can you help me make the leaves?..

Wow thanks! I’m going to say I made them now.”

Wonder being very creative with her 3D flower.

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Wonder, A’Niya, and Sabarin helping Althea with attendance for the day.

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IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 7 DECEMBER 4, 2019 Attendance in classroom: 13/16

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uring this lesson, two of the adults were absent, so today was the perfect day to start painting the columns white.

The groups were divided to start painting the columns, and while they were painting, the students did a fun activity relating architecture and their bodies.

They created a mansion and skyscraper with their bodies on the floor of how they envisioned it in their heads. Then some did a fun compression and tension exercise to see what it was like with their bodies rather than objects.

Today was more about painting and getting the columns ready for its natural elements!

-Photo showing compression/tension exercise with Andrae, Za’Den, and Sabarin.

-Photo of the kids making a skyscraper with their bodies.

-Photo of compression/tension exercise.

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STUDENT QUOTE “I’m going to go upside down!”

Photo of the kids creating a mansion with their bodies.

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IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 8 DECEMBER 11, 2019 Attendance in classroom: 14/16

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oday was exciting because the students got to put together the columns for their primitive hut. They remembered the relation between nature and material and was excited to replicate their own classroom version of what it would look like.

It was great because when the architects arrived, each student already had a baggy of their own stuff to glue onto the columns.

The students each took turns filling the columns up with their leaf embossings, flowers, 3D flowers, and whatever else they decided to make throughout the different lessons. The students enjoyed seeing the relationship between nature and the columns, and especially were big fans of the 3D flowers they created because they made the columns “pop”. While others were gluing, some decided to make more 3D flowers to be able to fill in the gaps.

Photo showing the result of gluing the flowers onto the columns.

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STUDENT QUOTE “That’s my flower can I glue it on... pleaseeeeee?”

Photograph of the hut first coming together.

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Photo of the columns after the students glued on their projects.

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IN-CLASSROOM SESSION 9 DECEMBER 18, 2019 Attendance in classroom: 12/16

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oday was the last day of production!

During this session each student received the print-out of their faces and the reactions we received when handing them out was priceless. They were having a great time comparing faces and cutting them out.

This session was fun for everyone because they got to glue the last natural pieces they created onto the columns. It was nice seeing their faces light up when it started all coming together.

The roof structure was also finished today and the second the roof was placed on top, a lot of them started running over to see if they could all fit underneath it.

While some students finished gluing, other students started playing the game Seven Up. It was an enjoyable day, and once their ornaments were placed on the roofs they were speechless.

The students saw the final primitive hut and enjoyed seeing their faces attached at the top of the columns, being the capital of the column itself. They didn’t realize that’s what the hut would look like and were excited that they were able to fit underneath it, counting how many of them could fit at the same time.

They realized that everything they’ve learned throughout all the sessions helped with creating and understanding the primitive hut. They were also impressed that architecture could be fun and stated that

they were going to miss us coming every wednesday.

It was sad saying goodbye, but it was definitely a rewarding experience. Working with these students blossomed the creative spark because they reminded us that there are many different ways to approach everything.

Even if we taught the students, they also taught us, or at least reminded us that creativity is not limited but something to play around and experiment with.

Thanks to all the students and everyone who participated in the program for helping create such a great primitive hut.

-Photo of Jo’Mier cutting out his face.

-Za’Den showing the funny face he made when his photo was taken.

-A’Niya cutting out her own face.

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STUDENT QUOTE “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.. 8! 8 people fit in here!”

A photo of their final primitive hut, including the ornaments they created hanging off the roof.

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THANK YOU