Architects in Schools -Building Urban Arazi Part Four

Arazi-Urban

Introduction

Ava, Reece, Trevor, Kaila,Hailey,True, Tristin,Christian,Tim
The city of Arazi was built to promote empathy and kindness. In order to to do that we have made a plan to create buildings that encourage interaction. For example, an apartment that has a party rooftop with a dance floor, it is called the “A party ments”. It began with a foundation called, Architects in Schools. We had a builder named Keith Knowles to teach and help us accomplish this project. Our class was split into groups creating the city of Arazi. The city planners, Julie, Marlon, Max and Katie helped us with our part. They gave us tips and advice. They also helped when we needed to fix things or change things.
Building, Structure and Scale
In the process we used a lot of cardboard, we also used plastic for the windows. To go over the cardboard -you can't forget paint! The paint is so important to Arazi. Without it Arazi wouldn't be the same colorful place it is. The next material is paper, we built big signs and walk ways to show the place you are at. The land material is turf it is in all the the grassy areas of the park. These were the top five materials in the city of Arazi!
Craftsmanship
In the urban section of Arazi we worked really well together and got it all done. Each of our teammates had a skill that we used to make the city. When we finished, we would help others that weren't done---that's empathy in the making! Overall, the urban section had a really good time. We each got assigned about 1-3 buildings. Each person got to decorate and build what they were assigned.
Teamwork
Most of the times we helped each other with our buildings so it could get done faster. Even if we were done we would still be working on other things that we could help with. We did not get into arguments easily even-though we got in to MANY disagreements! Last but not least, as you can see the teamwork and quality showed lots of thought and care in our section of the city.
The Urban Area
The Urban side of town is a positive city and welcome to all! We want everyone to have something to do whether it is... watching a basketball game at the “Arazi Center”, relaxing on the garden rooftop of “Zen-Ments” apartments and looking out of the ten story building the “Arazi Tower”, while working on your important papers. You walk out of your new favorite gym, “K-Fit” you see a beautiful 5 star hotel named “Hotel Federico” you just have to check it out! You tour the building and find out some of the famous celebrities we know now have stayed there! Then you see the hard working employees lifting boxes left and right into the “Empathy-side Factory” and people enjoying the lovely cafe food from the “Cat Cafe” while reading your favorite Dr. Seuss book, Cat in the Hat in “The Seuss Library”. Now it is you your turn, you go

around, tour the urban area and you see two places that spot your eye... the “Hospital” and the daycare right next to it, “Hand in Hand”. There are the nicest employees in “Hand in Hand” and the most relaxing chairs to sit on in the “Hospital” (What? Sometimes you just have to relax.) The next day you realize you TOTALLY forgot about your friend’s birthday in two days! You know she likes sports and shoes so you make a quick stop at “Swoosh”, the place for all you sports needs, and get her/him a new pair of Swoosh Airs and a brand new basketball. After a long week of touring the urban part of Arazi you think to yourself, “This is the place to be!”.
Conclusion

The final product was amazing we had roads, sidewalks, apartments, plants, and fun! We think that it was a valuable experience because we learned many lessons like building with scale and using household materials such as turf, cardboard boxes, sticks, paint, paper, pipe cleaners and lots more. When we were done building our buildings, we created cool signs. Our teacher was very helpful with cutting and problem solving. We had volunteers to help us primarily cut the cardboard. All fifth graders should participate in the Architects in the Schools.

Architects in Schools- Building Rural Azari Part Three

Arazi- Rural Siraj  Rumaisa  Logan Yara  Ethan Coope  Ashley Jacob

Our rural group had to craft with quality. Our hard work was the key to the amazing work that we created. This project is a great way to help our class with learning structures and different types of land. The whole city got split into three sections, rural, suburban and urban.
This project is called Architects In Schools..The purpose of doing this project was to learn about the three different parts of a city which are urban, suburban,and rural. We had to get the lessons from Mr.Knowles who was our teacher for this project. He helped us learn about the different parts of a community. Rural, which is the group that I am in, has less density and more open areas where people can enjoy their time outdoors. On the other hand urban, is more dense a place with cars and a lot of fun apartments and stores.In the suburban area there is a beautiful park that little kids could play in along with a big planetarium and many houses.Before any of this was done,Mr.Knowles had us do many different activities which included measuring, what buildings go where,and most importantly how to build a community . In our mind we imagined a community that showed empathy in every way. Also a community that would have people interacting and communicating with each other.Our city is called ARAZI ( It means land in Turkish ).
There are urban, suburban, and rural. Each area has many different and interesting things about them. In the urban, there are tall skyscrapers, a hotel, a hospital, and a cafe. It’s really dense, so not much open space, but there is still a lot of great things about it. In the suburban, It’s not so dense, so there space to move around. There’s a school, a playground, homes, and even a planetarium! The rural area is all open space. There's a forest with a trail, an aquarium, a barn, a Japanese garden a greenhouse, a market, and a beach with a pier. I had brought back sand from my trip to Mexico for the beach. No vehicles are allowed here, only non motorized vehicles.! There are plenty of spaces to move around in this area. These were the the types of communities in our class's city.

For myself,I had to take responsibility for making the tables and benches and helping others finish what they were assigned on , because we were rushing out of time. But we used effort and flexibility to finish the Rural area. Everybody took responsibility of doing a part in the rural area like, the grass that me and Ashley did it, Rumaisa did the farm, Ashley also did the market and the rest of my teammates worked on what they were supposed to do, like a barn. We started out with a piece of paper and brainstormed our ideas on there. That is how we got started. For the planning, it took a long time for us to see where to place our buildings and what materials we should use for them. We also thought of which color we should paint our buildings and others.

Everyone in the three groups, urban, suburban, and rural, had to bring materials to build something whether it was for a building, a beach or a park, like we did. The class learned about the different types of arches and structures that builders uses in their own buildings. Some people also based their buildings off of real life ones as well.
The class also did activities that were about the different structures.One time we did a activity where people made structures using our bodies which was fun.

Cooper: Japanese Garden
● Bamboo twigs
● Fake trees Jacob: Pier
● Skewers
Yara: Restaurant and tables and benches
● Cardboard
● Skewers Ethan: Petting zoo
● cardboard Logan: Beach
● Fake sand ● Rocks
● Blue paint 

Ramasia: Farm ● Soil 

● Seeds Siraj: GreenHouse

• ●  Turf and trees
  
• ●  Sticks
  Ashley: Painting, Aquarium, market
  ●  Paint
• ●  Paper
• ●  Cardboard
  
  AND GLUE FOR EVERYTHING  
  
  Everyone had to build their own buildings or bring something special. Jacob built the barn and the pier, Ethan built the petting zoo called Arazi Animals, and I built the Japanese Garden, Saraj built the greenhouse, Rumaisa made the farm, Logan made the beach, and Ashley made the aquarium and market. I feel like the quality of this project was very high on this project, such as the tiny fish in the aquarium, the small plants in the farm, and the planks and lily pads of the Japanese garden.
  

The overall process of the whole project was very difficult. We had disagreements along the way but, we are finished with this amazing product that represents all of the creativity, work, and pride of our classroom. It was really challenging because there were a lot of conflicts about where to put all the different buildings, about what each of us are assigned, or do something that everyone disagreed about. Anyway, it was pretty difficult, but worth it! The project took a few weeks in total. First, groups sketched out what we were going to make , luckily we could take out and add different things later on if we needed to. Next, groups slowly started to make different buildings and cover grounds. Finally, everyone added finishing touches and details to our town.

As my teammates and I placed down the final building, we could feel the rush of relief in the air. “We’re finished!” everyone shouted. We were taking pictures of our final outcome and we were all filled with pride. In my opinion, I loved the rural part of the city because there were many little details in this section of Azari. I like how the whole project represented our teamwork.and perseverance. 

Architects in Schools-Building Suburban Arazi Part Two

Arazi-Suburban
By: Olivia, Caleb W, Nathan, Erica, Sawyer, and Kiralee

Arazi , this was, “the hype” during this long and, somewhat tiring month of building. So, you may be wondering, what in the world is Arazi?. Well, it just so happens to mean “land” in Turkish, which, in my opinion, is perfect for the name of a city.

The purpose of the suburban area is to be a friendly environment where people can relax and have a lot of fun. For example, there is a park right next to the Stargazer Planetarium. Also, there is a outdoor museum next to some small,family apartments. These apartments were designed for people to get to know each other. As you can see, we have many great things to do in the amazing city of Arazi.

The building process for the suburban area had some difficulties, but we resolved them as well as possible. As we were building, we made sure that we had precise measurements of our buildings. There were many things that we had to build, so we split it up into parts, like the parks, houses, bridges, pond, and Planetarium. We had to consider small details. When we had our work session,everyone worked hard. During some work sessions we had disagreements about where everything was going. Many of our plans would change and we would have to move things around. During the last couple of work sessions, some of us would take time from our recess to work and get as much done as we could before the due date. As time passed and it got closer to the due date, every group got stressed that it wouldn’t be done in time, but it was finished. Once we finished and the final project was done we all were so amazed about how amazing it looked that we couldn't have been happier.

During the process, we came across some difficulties Like things breaking and some people wanted it their way. but others wanted another way, and eventually we stopped. Then, we had ran out of some materials so we had to improvise, for example: we tried to make a hill for the middle of the city, but we had no tissue paper or glue to do papier mâché, 

 

 Learning about scale

 The challenges were that we had trouble agreeing with our decisions. Some of us wanted different things than others but in the end we resolved it. We also had trouble building. Along the way things broke and bent, but we made it through and the suburban area of Arazi turned out 10 times better than all of us thought it would.
We had a lot of challenges, but at the end we worked everything out, and it was worth it. There was stress and anger but things turned around. Our team had fun doing the project, and I think that we all could agree that we had way more fun than what seemed possible.

Architects in Schools-Building the City of Arazi Part One/Four

Our class had the incredible experience with a program titled, Architects in Schools This was my first experience with this program, and I am a fan. I first met with Keith Knowles and he listened to my vision of what I wanted for our class. In our classroom we focus on being like a family by supporting each other and showing empathy. We also discussed how angry the world seems and more and more people are involved with their screens than with each other. I told Mr. Knowles how I would like to challenge them to create a community that will encourage empathy, compassion,and human interaction. Keith was excited for this to unfold.We wanted all members involved, so I put them in teams. Together we had four groups: Urban Planners,Rural,Suburban and Urban. We do many team projects so, I felt confident that they would be able to meet the challenge. 

The following weeks, Mr. Knowles led them with many activities leading to our building project. 

It began with brainstorming with what we would want in our city these are some of the ideas that we came up with........

Know neighbors     Ask questions Use the library   Sing Have potlucks Dance

Respect elders   Start traditions  Play Walk more Ask questions   Feed animals

Bake extra and share  Grow a garden Buy Local   Support education Share Parks

Discuss Debate  Ask for help Help others    Value Art Organize Block Parties

Look at stars……

 

Field trip to Providence Park and Allied Works

The rest of the building of Azari will be told by each group. They wrote as a team their thoughts on the final project, I am beyond proud of our efforts. They demonstrated thought and care. Read what they have written and you will understand why Architects in Schools is fabulous. I would like to thank Mr.Keith Knowles as well as Allied Works and Turner Construction for providing us with an incredible field trip to Providence Park and a tour of the real life architect office! You have inspired many of my students to pursue architecture as a possible profession.

City Planners  Marlon, Julie, Katie,Max

We are the City Planners, we were in charge of making sure that everything ran smoothly, we also brainstormed city names and created brochures and commercials that advertised the city of Arazi.

The purpose of this community is to encourage empathy and human interactions. We also wanted to improve team building skills and flexibility. Many of the features in this city could be used in real life, such as, vines on buildings to reduce pollution, solar panels on rooftops, and other rooftop attractions to bring people together.

The Architect In Schools project was led in our class by Keith Knowles. He is a builder, and the owner of Everlife Home. Mr. Knowles has been a great teacher in our classroom, he taught us about scale, different structures and different types of communities. He also helped us resolve our issues, which helps us with team building.

Before building our city, we envisioned an energy efficient community, that also promotes interaction. A couple examples that display energy efficiency are, the solar powered factory, and the wind turbines in the rural area. Interaction in our community, is shown by, the public planetarium, and the many parks that each have their own unique features.

As the city planners, another thing we had to do was make sure that everything in our city was built the right way, with good quality, and high detail. Why did we do this? Well, we wanted a community that brought people together and a community that helped people understand empathy.

Since we were not assigned to a specific area, we helped other groups keep the area how it would be in a real community that would promote interaction. In the rural area, it was mainly focused on keeping it open, while still keeping the basic necessities. In suburban, we wanted to make sure that it would be the main example of empathy and interaction in our city. We wanted urban to be dense, but not too dense that it is overwhelming.

Seeing that we are not actually builders, we did not build. But we did give advice to the different groups, telling them where to put buildings, how to build them, and what to build. Scale was a big challenge in this project. Many of us did not understand scale at first, but over time, we began to understand. One of the kids in our class, was given the responsibility of being the Materials Manager. He worked with our group, making sure that everyone got the materials that they needed. This was a big help, because a lot of the kids didn’t bring in materials.

For any project, you have to understand teamwork and flexibility. For this project, this was a very important component. For example, there was a specific process that we had to go through, first the class had to brainstorm what they wanted in each section, as city planners  we went around approving or disapproving different ideas. Next was the building stage. This was the longest and hardest stage. But since we (The City Planners) didn’t build much, we mainly went around helping and supervising different groups.

The quality of our finished product was hard to achieve, and despite our arguments and challenges, we persevered. Specific groups had some problems, but with help from Mrs. Krueger, the city planners, and Mr. Knowles, the finished product was phenomenal. This experience was very valuable and we want more schools and architects to do this.