Teaching Architecture and Design at the Project School

We are excited to be a part of a new program with the Project School and Habitat for Humanity to design and build outdoor sheds for Habitat homeowners. Our design team, Alex Minor, Tucker Jaroll, and Ernesto Castaneda visit the students of the Project School every Friday for an hour-long instruction on architecture and the whole world of design. They can be found presenting topics like the design phases, design elements, scale and measurement, how to interact with a client, how to come up with new architecture concepts and even model making. 

After their weekly presentation, they always end their time with an activity. “Last week we did a new activity that involved playing a song and the kids had to conceive an idea from that song,” said Tucker. We also had the kids do a show-and-tell where they had to bring in an object from home and create a design based on that object and present it to the class.

In order to teach them how to sketch and practice the process behind sketching, we walked down and drew the courthouse building. Another concept we are teaching them is how to measure without using measuring tape by using the scale of other objects as a reference point for size.

The kids really enjoy our crew visiting. We all laughed so much while role-playing possible customer interactions. “One funny scenario we asked them to practice was a client asking for golden toilets and a seven-car garage that had a budget of $20,” said Tucker.

The program runs for about 2 months and then the kids will take what they have learned and put that skill to use with the Habitat for Humanity. Afterward, our building team will be helping execute the build of their designed sheds. We look forward to seeing what the students produce and love being a part of this great school and program!