Hi, I’m Rebecca.
I am from the UK
I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Nottingham and am currently in my first year of the Master of Architecture course in the Continuity Atelier.

My interests include understanding and designing spaces for people and function and the old-fashioned way of doing things with a simple pen and paper, like drawing by hand and physical modelling.
Outside of architecture I love to travel to all over the world and experience fun activities and different cultures. I also like to read and write, and growing as many plants as possible on my windowsills and, much like my plants, I like to be outside in the warmth (preferably on holiday somewhere).

I am looking forward to working with Brick by Brick and Oswald Road Primary School because it offers the opportunity to inspire and teach younger children and will be a different experience than what is usually offered on projects at university, hopefully expanding and varying my skillset not only in the workplace but also in life. I am exited for the action weeks ahead!

About the Project

Our Project is based at Oswald Road Primary School. We are working on creating a workshop for the Year 4 students over a day and a half.

We will be getting the children’s creative juices flowing and inspiring them with our architectural knowledge. From taking them on a site visit to appraise the site, to showing them 2D drawing techniques and 3D modelling techniques, we hope to teach them what an architect is and what they do through our interactive workshop and activities.

The site we will be using for our workshop is located on the school’s grounds and contains the old caretaker’s house, some outhouses and some external land in between. The school want to reuse this area of land to create a ground floor community space available for renting, first floor office spaces, and a nursery drop off and waiting area with external access. We will be using the children’s ideas from the workshop to help us design proposals for the school’s consideration, focusing mostly on the elevations and externals to really make an impact.

We hope to create an enjoyable, creative workshop for the children and incorporate their crazy ideas into something feasible and workable, and maybe the children will be able to see their ideas come to life one day!

05.20_WORKSHOP DAY 2 CLASS 4A PLAN DRAWING SESSION

Today was the final workshop day at Oswald Road and the culmination of our preparation work. Our work today was all in the classroom, meaning that a master’s student from each group had to teach a class.

For class 4A, the responsibility fell onto me. For being not completely prepared for this undertaking, I think it went rather well. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to talk to a room full of children like that, but they were all really attentive and receptive to the PowerPoint. I have to say that the PowerPoint was great so props to the team that pulled it together - it was easy for me to follow and for the children to understand what we were working through.

The morning session consisted of teaching the children some more architectural skills. The children picked up and understood the concept of plans, sections and elevations through drawing their breakfast and a piece of fruit amazingly and this helped immensely with the coming tasks.

I didn’t really know what we were expecting when we gave the children the site plans, but what they came up with was creative and imaginative and they took the conversations over themselves once they were started. They talked about what they wanted to include and discussed between themselves how they would put them into the spaces we had, and the students helped out with what the children were thinking. I think this process helped us to realise just how much we have learned through our studies so far that we subconsciously think about when designing when we had to try to pass on some of this information to the children as they were drawing. In turn, the children have reminded us of the creative freedom we once had back then and how that can help us create more imaginative designs ourselves, and I think we were all thinking of ways that we could try to make some of their crazy designs more into reality throughout the process, making it an invaluable experience for all of us.

05.20_WORKSHOP DAY 2 CLASS 4A MODEL MAKING SESSION

The afternoon session consisted of creating 3D models of the crazy ideas the children came up with earlier in the day. The children really showed their personalities through the model making and I feel like the students really encouraged this. So, we managed to create 5 completely different models in the end, including a cat mansion, a monster eating the building, lots of pools and football fields, stargazing areas and colourful murals and stained glass. The model making is where the children really let loose and created designs completely out of the box. Whether we were expecting this, I’m not sure, but we were all incredibly impressed with what the children came up with. I’m really hoping that the students are able to take the colour and fun that the children put into their models and plans into a more feasible designs later in the week that we can present to the appointed architect.

I think the workshop was a great learning opportunity for everyone in the classroom from all different points of view. I’m hoping that the MSA students have learnt to let loose a bit and get some creative ideas flowing near the start of a project and think more about what a project provides to a client before getting too bogged down in too much detail. And I hope that the children at the school had a lot of fun and learned something about architecture along the way.

I want to also say a big well done to the other students in my room that were helping the children. They interacted great with the children and brought their own approaches to the group that helped create the variety of outcomes. I feel like they were thrown into the deep end with this workshop but everyone did amazingly and they should be proud of how they all did today.