Check out this update from St Jospeh’s where Evelyn D’Arcy and TY students share their final design adventures.

DAY 6

Day 6 provided a break from the classroom with a trip to IMMA for a guided tour of the Eileen Gray exhibition, provided by the extremely knowledgeable Rachel McAree, IAF education curator. We were all very impressed with Eileen’s far-reaching ideas and groundbreaking furniture design – a particular favourite of mine being a movable tray table for breakfast in bed! We bumped into a group of sixth year students who were also checking out the exhibition as part of a project for art class, but had no time to chat as we headed in to the Lecture room for a presentation on our work to date!

With Monika and Isabelle’s help, I made a short presentation to an audience including other architects and teachers working on the scheme, as well as Eamonn Greville from the Department of Education and Skills who was extremely impressed with the girls’ ideas. We all talked a little bit about how the project was going and the important things to consider when designing schools, and the impact architecture can have on the lives of young people.

Special thanks to Alina, Ciara, Monika, Sara and Isabelle for joining in the discussion and providing the most important voices on the day – the students’ ones!

Evelyn Darcy and St Joseph’s Students

DAY 7

Excitement in the air – as rumour had it a press photographer was on the way! – we met for our final workshop, which pulled all of our work together with a group recap on the important things to include in our projects, and to practise drawing up our work in the style an architect uses. I explained that architectural drawing is a kind of language, understood by all construction workers worldwide, and is really quite easy when you get the hang of it!

To help with the idea of scale – how the human body relates to the space around it and how to use it to decide how big, wide or tall rooms should be, we cut out figures of people at different scales and used them to help us draw. I showed how I’d done this while working on a project for a Montessori school (example section and 3D sketches here). Drawing plans, sections and elevations help an architect to think about and show everything in a building, from the furniture on the plans to the windows, whiteboards and any other decoration on the walls in the sections. The girls developed ideas from the models they’d made in the previous workshop and even came up with some new ones.

This workshop was a lot of fun, with everyone having a go and working really well together in their groups. The only bad thing for me was that it flew by far too fast and soon was time to say goodbye!

We are hoping to get together again in the summer term, to meet with the other schools who have been participating in the project, and to share all our ideas together but for now it’s goodbye from the students of St. Joseph’s!

St Joseph’s Students

To finish up, some thoughts from the girls on the project say it best:

“I thought we would spend the weeks looking at what other architects made instead of actually making things ourselves, which was good”. Ciara Foley

“I found it interesting as it was an interactive course where we got to use our imagination and build our own pieces”. Alina Balc

“I really enjoyed working with other students and learning about people’s different perspectives as well as being able to see how we can make a practical change in our school”. Monika Janas

“This was a very interesting and inspiring course to be a part of. I didn’t think that we would get the opportunity to design and build something of our own, which gave us a chance to show our creative sides.” Isabelle Ryan

“I was surprised. It was more fun than I thought it was going to be!” Sara Lynch

and last but not least:

“I found it to be a fascinating and innovative method of engaging the students and eliciting creativity from them. We as a school feel privileged to have been part of the programme.”
Mr. Hayes (TY co-ordinator)

Finally a big thank you to everyone involved:
The students Alina Balc, Denisa Covaci, Holly Farrell, Carley Finnegan, Ciara Foley, Aoife Goulding, Daneka Hennessy, Monika Janas, Debra Jose, Katie Kearney, Sara Lynch, Caitlyn Murray, Irma Rubstavicuite, Isabelle Ryan, Natalia Szarek, Amino Hassan, Ewelina Kapuscinska and Klaudia Ciechanowicz.
The TY co-ordinator is Conor Hayes and the principal Maedhbh Daltan.

See you in the summer term everybody!