by Catherine Teegarden Center for Architecture Foundation
Elementary and middle school students had an opportunity to explore their neighborhoods’ architecture and their own design ideas, thanks to a new partnership between the Center for Architecture Foundation and the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD). This multi-part program combined training for DYCD after-school and summer program staff with hands-on programs for students at four program sites in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Twenty DYCD staff members participated in two days of professional development workshops at the Center in June, which introduced them to fundamentals of architectural design, and successful activities they could use with their students to explore their local architecture. The group learned new architectural vocabulary and design concepts, and went out into the Center’s neighborhood to see how they can serve as clues to understanding a building’s structure, design, age, and function. They tested out hands-on activities they would use with students, such as drawing floor plans and creating scale models, and exploring the structural design of skyscrapers and bridges by building structural models of each.
CFAF Design Educators then developed custom neighborhood architecture kits for each site to assist staff in transferring these lessons to their own neighborhoods. The kits included a slide show of local architecture, illustrated architectural vocabulary sheets, a neighborhood walk activity sheet for students, and a written summary of the neighborhood’s architectural development for staff reference. CFAF staff and educators introduced these materials at the sites through slide discussions and neighborhood walks with staff and students. Middle school students at Grand Street Settlement on the Lower East Side were excited to see images of familiar buildings projected on the big screen, and shouts of “That’s right down the street!” and “My grandma lives there!” preceded their architectural scavenger hunt in the neighborhood, where they tried to find examples of some of the new terms they had just learned, such as a cornice, lintel, and stoop. Students based at IS 145 in Jackson Heights, Queens, which sits in the middle of the Historic District, explored their local area with historic photos in hand, seeing how much had changed, and how much had been preserved thanks to the historic designation.
The program concludes this week with hands-on design workshops for students at each site, where they have the opportunity to design and build their own architectural models. Projects vary from scale models of their own apartments at the Dodge YMCA program for 3rd-to 5th-graders at PS 261 in Cobble Hill, and new buildings with a sustainable design theme at the Shorefront YHMA program in Brighton Beach, to a mini-neighborhood model at Grand Street Settlement, and tree house designs for a local park at the Goodwill of NY program in Jackson Heights. CFAF plans to continue to work with these sites in the fall to help DYCD staff continue to use their local neighborhoods as a teaching resource with new students in their after-school programs. Plans are also in place to have students visit the Center this fall to see the exhibits and participate in our StudentDay@theCenter programs.