Introduction

This year for 2020, the ARCKIT team is deeply focused on featuring the educational aspects of ARCKIT as a strong tool to teach all things STEAM within the classroom. Their message today is all about empowering the minds of students through architecture, exercising both their practical/social skills simultaneously as they learn about the environment and sustainability. With classrooms nowadays being such fast-paced learning environments, ARCKIT allows for educators and students to engage with a simple/clean workflow that mimics modern, modular construction. The array of interconnecting parts makes for endless design iterations and quick teardowns; two extremely important and valuable characteristics that ensure classroom time is well spent.

The ARCKIT Workshop

Starting off the year strong, this past February,Chirac Ndetan and I, were invited to London, Ontario by Michael Santolupo of St. John Paul ll Catholic Secondary School to help lead a three-day, hands-on ARCKIT Tiny Home Design Workshop. With a technical background in mechanical engineering, Mr. Santolupo has been a leader in both crafting and teaching pre-engineering/design-thinking curriculums for high school students. With 28+ years of experience, his innovative design programs at John Paul are highly regarded in Ontario and positively recognized throughout North America. Having been recently introduced to the ARCKIT system, Santolupo has incorporated ARCKIT into several of his design curriculums. Fairhurst and Ndetan got involved to help facilitate an example successful workshop with ARCKIT and document it as precedent for other classrooms in North America.

Together, in groups of three, 60+ students learned about key sustainability strategies in our modern world and tackled the challenge of designing their own sustainable tiny homes with ARCKIT components. In an action-packed three days totaling three hours of classroom time per student, students became acquainted with ARCKIT, formed teams, researched Tiny Home designs, prototyped their home in Sketchup, and built their model to scale with ARCKIT. With students between the age of 14-18, coming from all backgrounds within STEAM, it was intriguing and inspiring to watch how each approached ARCKIT for the first time, using their backgrounds/experiences to help shape and guide design decisions within their team. The results simply speak for themselves, with each team having a completed model representing what they learned; all ready to present and showcase to their peers by the end of the third day.

As always, it is an honor to see ARCKIT have such a resounding impact in the classroom. We loved hearing about the workshop’s success and collecting the feedback from all the students. Many thanks to all that were involved in making this trip and workshop a success!

Are you currently using ARCKIT in your curriculum? If so, ARCKIT love to hear about it and showoff your experience! If not, get in touch today with the ARCKIT team to hear more about how you can bring ARCKIT to your classroom or makerspace.

Gallery

Video Documentation

End Notes

Rick Fairhurst, (RikySongSu) CVO of Snowdrop, is dedicated to developing and documenting low-impact architecture in developing countries, addressing people’s need for water, electricity and health to promote engaging and productive lifestyles.

As always, if you have any questions, suggestions or comments, I would love to hear from you in the comments section below or through email to thesnowdropteam@gmail.com or rikysongsu@gmail.com.

Acknowledgements

A warm thank you to Michael Santolupo for being the greatest host / sharing his classroom with us and to ARCKIT for the opportunity to run another successful workshop!