Blog

By Jeff Zurlinden, Class of 2015, Education Guide, Exhibit Host

A dozen Varsity students (2nd to 4th graders) sit quietly on the floor with their eyes closed, waiting to tour their own unique make-believe place where people live.  This summer, the Chicago Architecture Center (CAC) joined other community stakeholders to facilitate learning activities as part of Project Exploration’s summer camp at the West Side STEM Center. Housed in George Leland Chicago Public School in the Austin Neighborhood, the camp serves as a STEM learning hub for about 80 students and families from across the city.

Today’s theme is ‘wacky and & wonderful.’ On other days, students discover mega-tall skyscrapers, practice engineering basics, uncover features of their communities, and collaborate to build in teams.  All of the activities explore the design process through the lens of each participating stakeholder.  “Our primary goal for experimenting with offsite programming, such as this,” says Rebecca Millham, CAC Education Coordinator, “is to meet students in their community, where they’re familiar, and to make architecture accessible to them.”

During their imaginary tour, the Varsity students are guided to see plenty of make-believe details: colors, sizes, shapes, roofs, windows, doors, steps, and porches.  Soon hands fly up and students eagerly describe the details of their unique houses and apartment buildings.

Then we page through a picture book of houses from around the world and see even more unusual houses posted on the internet, such as the Farnsworth House, Hundertwasser House, and an upside-down postmodern Cape Cod-styled house.  Next, students split into three groups to either build with LEGOs, draw a mural of a low-rise neighborhood, or draw a high-rise neighborhood on long sheets of brown paper. Every ten minutes they switch to the adjacent station to add to their friends’ designs.

It’s noisy, creative work as students and Education Guides exchange ideas and experiences.  Some of the students remember their previous CAC field trips and make connections with buildings they saw downtown. “The first group drew low-rise buildings, then the following two groups added embellishments like a hospital, schools, and an upper story grocery store connected to the next building by a walkway!” says Carol Muskin. “The boys taught me about the popular Fortnite video game as they added a store to sell the game in the neighborhood.”

By mid-morning the groups change and Juniors (5th to 6th graders) bring their dream neighborhoods to life. They also divide into three design teams to draw fresh murals or build with LEGOs. On the high-rise neighborhood mural, Junior students include roof-top parks, sky roads and bridges, and fill vacant lots with brightly colored narrow towers.

All the activities work to expose students to a wider world beyond the limits of their block, their school, and their neighborhood.  “In my first session I was soon reminded that buildings long familiar to me might as well have been Martian structures, even to the older students.  Yet they dove in and asked questions…making connections with places they’d “seen” through video games,” says Cathy Fey.

On other mornings Pee-Wees (K to 2nd graders) listen to Education Guides read picture books about Chicago, architecture, and construction.  Pee-wees squirm and wave their hands, eager to tell their own stories.  Then they build with wooden blocks in their own style, sometime tall, sometimes sturdy, sometimes filled with columns and arches.  Regardless of the activity or the age of the students, the discussion always returns to stories about their buildings.

Seniors (6th to 8th graders) apply their classroom skills during a visit to CAC for the new 90-minute Chicago City of Architecture student tour.  It’s a perfect extension of STEM methodology to architecture, art, design, and social history. Student tours move way beyond facts.  In such a stimulating environment, students give us their curiosity, and we use questions coupled with manageable amounts of information to stretch their critical thinking skills.  Education Guides use buildings, streets, the river, and its bridges to tell the story of how Chicago developed as a city.

The guides layer in discussions of building styles: Beaux Arts, Art Deco, Mid-Century Modern, and Contemporary Modern.  Students combine their observations with their experiences, opinions, and guesses to form ideas that we discuss.  We get to the heart of STEM.  Observations lead to hypotheses that are tested with more observations that refine hypotheses, and so it progresses.  Students develop visual literacy and untangle complex design and construction questions. For example: Why was Chicago founded on a river and a lake?  What difference does a bridge make?  How do you feel in this space?  What would it be like to live in Marina City?  What impression does the design of the lobby of the Carbon and Carbide Building give?  How would you construct the Aqua?

The best part of the tour for one eighth-grader was “learning about the structures, especially the materials and how the buildings were built.”  Another was interested in façade ornamentation: “I really liked learning about the meaning of the symbols, people, and decorations on the outside of the buildings, and how they tell the story of why a building was built and how it was used.”  After the tour, discussion continues in the classroom to further link the tour with students’ personal thoughts and feelings.

Project Exploration Summer Camp exposes students to STEM in fresh, hand-on ways.  But it also teaches students to collaborate in design teams, to respect each other’s observations and opinions, and to see and discuss a broad range of the built environment. “Before camp I didn’t really think about buildings, just what you did in them, and where they were located so you didn’t get lost,” a Senior explains.  “Now, I look at them closer and ask myself why they look like the way they do.”