Lesson Overview:

Students identify meaning in visual form, understanding that there is visual as well as verbal language. Students discover some of the conventional arrangements of visual form that have meaning within our culture and social structures.

Length of Lesson:

One 45-minute class period

Instructional Objectives:

Students will:

• demonstrate ability to follow specific instructions in the building of a structure.
• apply principles of design in creating a structure.
• assess structural characteristics that provide clues as to a building's function.
• use visual language to describe structures
• apply the vocabulary of building forms in their assessments, including: treatment, scale, symmetry, columns, spires, and site.

Instructional Plan:

Divide students into groups of three. Arrange the classroom so each group has a workspace, a piece of cardboard, a bag of blocks, and a 3" x 5" card with a function assignment written on it. The students, using only the blocks in their bags, and the 12" x 12" cardboard as the site, will create a building with one of the following recognizable functions: house, school, bank, farm, gas station, church, city hall, or supermarket. Give each group an identification number, by writing it on the corner of the cardboard.

Using the cardboard as the "site" and only the blocks in the bag, ask the students to build their assigned building on the "site." Tell them they are to build it so that the rest of the class will recognize the function of the building, which they are to keep secret until the end of the activity. Allow the class 10 minutes to design and build their assigned buildings.

Provide each group with a scoring sheet that lists the building types and provides space for each student in the class to check what (s)he believes is the correct function. Have each group tape this scoring sheet beside their building. Ask all members of the class to visit each site and mark their impressions of the building's function on the scoring sheet taped by each building.

Student groups should then return to their sites and tally the number of correct guesses as to the building's function. Have each group report their building's function and their scores, ranking the building structures from the one with the highest number of tally marks to the one with the least.

Discuss the characteristics that students "read" in the visual form that allowed them to select the right function for the building, or the characteristics that led them astray in selecting a function for the building different from the one intended by the designers. Consider the following elements:

• Treatment of the entrance
• Scale of the building
• Use of symmetry, columns, steps, spires, etc. that we associate with certain buildings
• Arrangement of the building on the site

Discuss the degree to which these forms are culturally specific: Have students explore the websites listed in the general Internet resources section, or show images on a projector, to answer the following questions:

• If we were to look for these buildings in another culture that students have studied in Social Studies class, what differences would we see?
• Have buildings always looked like this? For instance, how have banks changed over time? Why? Is security now a function of wall thickness or electronics? What changes have occurred because of the car? Because of automatic teller machines?
• What buildings share visual similarities? Why? Do they play the same role in our culture? What were the patterns of "wrong" answers in response to student designs?

Assessment:

Students will be individually assessed by:

• the amount and type of participation in the small group activity,
• the quality of participation in the discussion following the activity, and
• the use of visual language and proper vocabulary.

Student groups will be assessed by: (a scoring guide or rubric could be created for the groups)

• the successful building of a structure that resembles the building form they were assigned, and
• the inclusion of structural and design characteristics that relate to building's function.

Extensions:

The Architectural Education Resource Center's site has several hands-on activities that can challenge students' design knowledge.
Choose from:

• Outpost on Planet Marshmallow
• The Millionaire's Book Tower
• Designing Playgrounds
• String Math

In the interactive game Be an Architect students are taken step-by-step through the choices that architects make when designing a house.

Authors:

• Paul Tesar, Architect
  School of Design, North Carolina State University
  Raleigh, NC