You, architecture and the city

You, architecture and the city is a teaching program, by the NAL Academy, I was lucky to be a part of this program last week at the Slettaelva school in Tromsø.

(photo: Michele Renée Widerøe)

The concept:

Students are divided into small groups and assigned a type of building or function in a city. They design and make models to scale. Simple models are inserted into a larger model that together form a city. The discussions about urban design can be integrated into other school subjects, such as: civics, history, geography, KRL. These discussions take place at many different stages in both the process and scale.

The objective is to:

1. Increase the level of knowledge of the city's functionality.

2. Be able to identify various architectural elements that are present in a city,

and their impact on the whole.

3. Read the overall picture of the functions (public / private, sports, culture, metro, cars, etc.) and how they are organized in relation to each other. How are functions organized in terms of efficiency, landscape and road network?

4. Be able to argue and justify the choices they make in the process.

5. Be able to create drawings to be used for the the construction of the buildings"

(text:Tor Inge Hjemdal, NAL academy leader)

(photo: Nordlys newspaper)

Although at the end of two days of cardboard cutting, model building and urban discussions, only one of the students wanted to be an architect, it is my impression that all of them had fun and went home with a little more understanding of city planning and architecture processes.