It is amazing what Year 8 Design Technology pupils can do in less than two hours! Armed with wire, pipe cleaners, string, copper and other materials, and all the knowledge they could glean from Open House educator Nadine Adamski and the JAGS DT teachers, they set about creating models from initial drawings of two circles.              

To encourage imagination and open-mindedness, each pupil worked quickly on developing other people’s ideas, without explanation, so that two circles that meant a dj’s headphones to one had been originally intended to show a game of bouncing balls, and a double rolling pin emerged from what had started as a car. Some had treated the drawing as a ground plan, others as an elevation. 

Then the challenge of model-making in seconds, addressing  issues of stability and how to enter and to use the space, and using tissue, cellophane and the like to represent glass, steel and other materials it might be in reality.  The wire encouraged the girls to make curvy shapes, to get away from buildings as boxes. They learnt not to be precious about their own work, to develop what they were given without discussion.  They moved freely from 2-dimensions to 3 dimensions and back to 2 dimensions. All good practice for working in a design team.      

This was the second phase of a unique project for secondary schools. Year 8 have already been to the Horniman Museum to work with Nadine; direct experience of contemporary architecture followed by creative workshops is the starting point for developing design skills and awareness of the built environment. (Read about it in an earlier report). 

The brief they are working towards is the design of a temporary space that can be used for learning (interpreted as widely as possible). Sophie and Susie hit on a tropical them with water and fish, wicker and climbing plants. Watch this space for news of what they come up with.