Design a Building- Create a City Grade 3/4 N2 Artists in Residence Term 3 2012

Design a Building- Create a City

With Artist in Residence, Trevor Streader, the 3/4 neighbourhood students will create a series of buildings that will come together to create a unique city. Students will become familiar with the design process and Trevor will discuss the concept of design systems and explain that even though we are all using the same components and system, there is the potential for these to be organised in many different ways.

Students will be working as designers, discussing the brief, investigating, problem solving, exploring ideas and making. They will work both individually and collaboratively and will explore the links between the design, art and craft worlds.

The stages of design:

1.    Research

2.    Design concept

3.    Design development

4.    Making

Week 1

This week students listened to an introductory talk by Trevor about the designing exhibition at Melbourne Museum.

Trevor bought in a range of models to explain the process of design to the students.

Our discussion:

What do designers do?

“Designers communicate stories about the objects. This happens through models, text, diagrams, videos and movies and the objects themselves.

Designers often bring in other people with a range of skills, like artists and photographers, to help them with their designs and models.” Trevor

Designers design houses, show what something might look like, they do sketches. Andrew and Lucien

Artists paint pictures but designers have to put everything together. Beth

Architects design and map out the design for the builder. Ruli

The architects make a model and plans for the builder. Ruli

“So the architect makes sketches, solves problems, makes plans and then models before people are bought in to build.  Research is important too. Designers collect images to influence them in some way. At the start of a process we use mood boards to get the process going. These mood boards are a collection of images that are somehow related to what the subject is.” Trevor

How do designers communicate ideas?

“They use models. It is important to be careful with scale when building models. Everything that goes into the models is very carefully considered and thought out. Making a model gets the idea out of your head and makes it into something. It is about trying and testing ideas and often new ideas come from these. Models show other people what something looks like.” Trevor

Taking the Brief:

A brief explains the project that a designer will be working on.

Over the course of the next 5 weeks the students will create a model and design a certain type of building.

Stage 1 will be looking for inspiration and ideas and sketching ideas. This will happen next week. We are going to design our model using a system. A system is all about doing things that are similar but different.

This week, students were introduced to and investigated:

- design system examples

- card elements

- collaborative exploration into the elements

Week 2

This week students were given a brief by Trevor. A brief is the starting point of a design project. Designers are given briefs by their clients. Artists start with their own ideas from their own starting point and experiences.

Different shapes in a building can give you a different feeling about it. Shapes can evoke emotional responses.

Designers look to nature often for their inspiration.

“When I look at Federation Square I look see it as abstract shapes”. Max

We viewed a range of buildings that inspired us and gave us ideas for our own projects.

We asked :

Who is the building for?

What is it use?

What is the purpose of the building?

After viewing the photographs of a range of amazing buildings from around the world, we set about creating our own design following a design brief set by Trevor.

We discussed the process of sketching our ideas: when you first start sketching you are testing ideas and because you are trying out ideas you are free to experiment. As you progress through your ideas, some will stand out more than others and these will be the ones you will take further. Often designers start with drawings that are smaller rather than larger. Designers also often write their thoughts on their designs.

We discussed the benefits of making mistakes. We had a discussion about making mistakes, and how a mistake can lead to many new discoveries and inspire designers and artists to create something original and new.

After viewing the photographs we set about creating our own designs.  Trevor presented each student with a design brief.

These are the steps that we will follow as designers over the course of the next few weeks.

Your Project

To design and make a model of a specific type of building

Step 1 - Choose the type of building you would like to design

It must have a specific use

For example it could be:

-   A gym where people exercise

-   A library where people read or borrow books

-   A supermarket where people buy food

-   A theatre where people go to be entertained

-   A museum where people go to see things and learn or be

Step 2 – gather information about your type of building

Ask

-   who is it for?

-   what is it used for?

-   how will people use it?

-   when will people use it?

-   how would you like your building to feel?

-   how would you like your building to look?

Step 3 – look for inspiration for your design by looking at other building designs on the internet

Step 4 – sketch and draw lots of ideas you have for your building

Step 5 – decide which ideas you like and do a final drawing of your design

Step 6 – use the cardboard pieces supplied to form the skeleton of your building

Step 7 – use the textured paper to fill in your design and give it character

Step 8 – make a sign for your building and stick it to the outside

Step 9 –set up your model for a photograph

Step 10 – make a city with your classmates by placing all the models together

…

Students reflected and discussed possibilities for their designs with Trevor and then created a series of rough sketches of their initial ideas.

We then set about drawing our designs, mapping out our ideas and playing around with things that have inspired us.

Week 3

This week Trevor asked the students if they were inspired by any buildings during the week. Many students noticed buildings and shapes they hadn’t noticed before. Some even kept notes in their notebooks.

Trevor re-read the Design Brief we discussed last week and noted we are now up to stage 5. Today students focussed on making a final decision about their designs. They restructured and re drew some designs and made some alterations.

This week is also about beginning to build and construct the skeleton of the building. Students experimented and played with the cardboard shapes and materials. There are 4 different shapes; the rectangular, square, narrow rectangular and triangle shape. There are also joiners/connectors to use. Students discovered that if they used more connectors it was easier to stabilise the structure.

Students worked at the tables and examined their sketches. Students needed to review their drawings and finalise their sketches. When they were satisfied with their final sketch, they then started to collect the cardboard shapes and begin to start to work on the model. Students wondered if they could adjust their cardboard pieces. Students were asked not to change, fold or cut the systems or the basic shapes initially. It proved much more challenging to use the basic shapes provided to make the model design.

 Students noticed that the larger the scale of their model, the more detail they were able to put into it. They were forced to think in a new way and to problem solve in ways they had never had to do before this project.

We also noticed the second group of students benefited greatly from seeing how the structures of the first group had evolved.

Students discovered this week, that at this early stage in the design process, the models looked more like the skeleton of the building. We look forward to pursuing and developing our ideas further next week.

 

Week 4

This week we worked so hard to stabilise our buildings. We realised that a lot of the work we did last week was experimental and this week we had to modify our work and further develop the main structure.

The challenge of course has been to work with the limitations of the system provided by Trevor. This created the most frustration when making but also the most satisfying results when we found solutions to problems. We realised that these were often the same difficulties faced by designers when they are given a brief.

We reflected on the process of building:

I am making the structure more stable. Seb

I had to rebuild my building and work hard to give it structure. Charles.

The size of my building has been a challenge. Jack

I had to make it smaller and make the scale smaller. Najma

The challenge for me was piecing together using the connectors. Micah

My challenge was to make it stable when it was so narrow and tall. Sascha

I had trouble making my structure straight. I started off using just one connector but I realised I needed more connectors to make it more stable. Isabella

Week 5

This week our aim was to finalise and stabilise the skeleton of or structure.  It was our final chance to resolve the design issues and decide what our building would look like.

We used cellotape to tape the stabiliser sections to the main panels and our aim was to be able to lift the work up as a whole without it collapsing.

So this week was about consolidating the design and consolidating the strength of the structure.

Once we had established these stages in the process of our design brief, we were ready to move onto the next stage. This next stage was to add an outer shell to our building, joining flaps and panels on to the skeleton to complete the building process. We had, however, made a decision to keep some faces of our building open so that we were able to view the skeleton of our buildings from some viewpoints.

    

The internal structure has been an important part of our design and we wanted, to some extent, for this to be open, exposed and seen.

 Our aim was to be completely ready for next week so we can cover select parts of our buildings with decorative paper and foil.