We had an after school club called Architects In Action. Twelve 5th and 6th grade students met every Wednesday for 8 weeks. Mr. Steve Reiss was the architect assigned to work with our school by the Anerican Institute of Architects of Northern Virginia. He gave us a new word to learn every week that taught us an important idea about being an architect.
Our program included a study of geometric shapes in buildings and structures within architecture. We acted out various structures and then built small scale trusses with marshmallow and toothpicks.
We studied scale and measurements and also took a site visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House and the Wilson Bridge Construction Project. We then studied different forms and types of architecture around the world, examining buildings within different climates and cultures.
 |
 |
||
 |
|||
 |
 |
||
We selected a World's Fair for our project because it allowed us to design and build villages from different parts of the world. We created four teams, each working on a different village; Ireland & Scotland, Japan, El Salvador and an amusement & entertainment park.
After sketching the buildings in each village using bubble diagrams, created a program for each building and then we drew floor plans at a scale of 1"=10’.
We built the structures from many different materials, including balsa wood, foam core board, clay and cardboard. The buildings were then attached to an overall site plan of the worlds fair. We completed the model by adding landscaping and planting materials.
We especially want to thank our architect, Steve Reiss, for all the time he spent helping us learn about architecture and its connection to math and history.
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
Planning Stage
|
Getting help from the experts!! | ||||||||||
 |
 |
||||||||||
| Work in Progress | |||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
| The Finished Product | |||||||||||
to GT