Earn your LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification after a four-workshop architecture challenge: build a 1-metre bridge or a 50-centimetre building of your choice!
In this turnkey project, young architects use small wooden sticks and glue to build a structure that must hold a 4-kilogram load (bridges) or survive a 15-second earthquake (buildings).
Stronger than concrete, more beautiful than the Burj Khalifa: surprise us with green, environmentally friendly structures!
How it runs:
Visit 1: Architecture basics (60 or 75 minutes):
- Examples of bridges and buildings.
- Project briefing (choose the bridges and buildings with the teacher before workshop 2).
Visit 2: Materials handed out, projects get started (60 or 75 minutes).
Visit 3: Projects continue, optional (60 or 75 minutes).
Visit 4: Strength tests for the bridges and buildings, and LEED certificates (60 or 75 minutes).
Learning goals (elementary)
- Describe how one or more forces act on a structure (set it in motion, change its motion, stop it).
- Understand why the centre of gravity, symmetry and triangles matter in engineering.
- Research a bridge or a building.
- Take the project’s constraints into account (time, dimensions, strength, teamwork, building challenges).
- Design and build a neat, attractive structure while respecting the environment.
- Mark, cut and glue wooden pieces (glue and cutters).
- Present the results of the research.
Learning goals (secondary)
- Use different sources of information to research the chosen structure.
- Define the building constraints of the structure.
- Decide how to assemble the structure’s parts.
- Explain why measurements matter in an architecture project.
- Understand why managing materials matters, economically and environmentally.
