Kritterville

The "Designing Our World" series has started at the TP Loblaw Boys and Girls' Club with a hoot, a growl and a meow. The critters have taken over the K-club playground. It's up to our young designers to make them a great habitat.

We started with a 2D spacing challenge: turn the K club building and grounds into Kritterville. After picking a creature -real or mythical, the kids started off by drafting a plan. This was a 2D bird's eye view. Every creature needs a good lookout and somewhere to stash their food, so we encouraged the addition of nooks, dens, play perches and play structures, connecting corridors and walkways to define the different domains.

This is a great ape habitat, with exclusive areas for gorillas, chimps, bonobos and orangutans and a shared security gated maze compound on the front roof area. This maze is where the great apes will find their food.

After this landscaping session we challenged the kids to transform their blueprint into a 3D model of their animal habitat.They had to build it from picnic wear -plastic cutlery, foam cups, paper plates, straws and coffee stirrers. Offering a limited selection of found materials to build with makes this modelling task a little trickier. It requires exploration of how the materials connect, flex and balance.

The students experimented with how to join materials in novel ways to shape and stabilize their structure. We asked them to do this with no glue and as little tape as possible to make them think about strength, balance and material manipulation-all critical qualities for architects and builders. Despite the fact that kids love tape, some of them rose to this engineering puzzle!

This is a bird cage, built with interlocking forks and a cup. If you use enough forks it is a very sturdy structure.

This branching sculpture is a play perch for baby pandas. It provides a shaded area to hangout under and gnaw on bamboo as well as several dens extended on branches at the top of the climbing structure.

This lizard cage is part of a rain forest compound built around the school. The design includes the sleeping cage, a water area and a play structure. And interestingly this was one of three groups that included security cameras in their design. 

This kritterville is a home for many different animals. Big cats can lounge on a rooftop terrain and snakes and other reptiles lurk in the shaded area underneath. The large tower is for bugs to scale and is connected to the bird nest compound by a narrow aerial walkway.

Architectural prototyping requires spatial perception, mathematical thinking and basic crafting skills.
 

These workshops are made possible  by the Toronto Arts Council.

Life in the trees

One of our challenges this week was to plan and build an animal treehouse. After picking a creature -real or mythical, the kids started off by drafting a plan. This was a 2D bird's eye view or a side view. Every creature needs a good lookout and somewhere to stash their food, so we encouraged the addition of windows, doors, connecting stairs or corridors and furniture to define the different rooms.

                                         Here are some of the ideas:

This dragon den includes a surround view flying dome.

Many of the plans had modular components connected by tunnels. 

These lucky ants have an amusement park on hand.

"Hang-outs" featured prominently on many of the plans. 

This locust house has a hotel add-on for guests. 

This rabbit tree-warren connects to the ground-level burrow and has a nursery area for baby rabbits. 

A multi-level cat treehouse with climb zone, scratch post walkways and a relaxing lounge. 

Alternative sketches for hanging squirrel dens

At the end of this landscaping session we challenged the kids to transform their blueprint into a 3D model of their treehouse. Architectural prototyping requires spatial perception, mathematical thinking and basic crafting skills. Offering a limited selection of found materials to build with (in this case picnic ware: plates, cups, forks, spoons and coffee stirrers) makes this modelling task a little trickier. It requires exploration of how the materials connect, flex and balance. As play-doh and tape were involved, also a lot of fun!

Some students enjoyed experimenting with the materials to move beyond their 2D plans :

How high can this squirrel house possibly go? 

This student decided to plan an underwater treehouse. Here's her fish fountain. 

A cascading slide will connect the swim layers.

Ramps and spring-boards featured in this attractive squirrel-drome. Interesting geometry!

Construction team.

Working it out together