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.