Self-Guided Activities

Nurture your budding architect through these free, online design activities. These short, easy to follow design projects use simple materials to get kids exploring building design, NYC history, landscape design, interior design, game design, skyscrapers and more.

A merry go round made of construction paper and straws. Colorful illustrations of birds are taped to the straws.
Design a Merry-Go-Round
A set of six flashcards demonstrating ways to act out structural forces at work in architecture.
Acting Out Structures
Tree branches are taped together to form a bouquet within a cardboard tube, on a cardboard base.
Design Your Own Model Treehouse
A green bridge model made of paper, cardboard, and string
Build a Cable-Stayed Bridge
A pinwheel made of white cardstock. Written on the fins in colored pencils are ideas for ways to protect the environment.
Create a Wind Turbine
Truss bridges made of dried spaghetti, toothpicks, and marshmallows
Build a Truss Bridge
A sun shade made out of construction paper.
Design a Sunshade
Diagram of a beam bridge structure
Building Bridges Activity: Beam, Truss, Arch, and Suspension
An accordion book with student illustrations on the front
How to Make an Accordion Book
2020 05 26 12.48.47 1
Design A Rooftop Hat
Structure Skyscrapers 1500px
Skyscraper Structures!
IMG 20200601 182643 1500px
How to Create Miniature 3D Furniture
Model 1500px
How to Build a 3D Scale Model
IMG 20200521 154657 1500px
Create Your Own Mood Board
Plan Color 1500px
Redesign Your Room with a Floor Plan and Furniture to Scale
Tim Plan
How to Sketch a Floor Plan
K 12 Scale Measurement
Drawing Activity: How to Make and Use a Scale Ruler
Our Lady of Sorrows complete the bldg 1500px
Drawing Activity: Complete the Missing Half of a Symmetrical Building
Step 2
Design a Marble Maze Using Scrap Cardboard
Seaport Layout Draft Horizontal
Architectural Scavenger Hunt in South Street Seaport
532 Lga Place NYPL
Then and Now Using Urban Archive
Box Building Example 1500px
How to Make A Box Building
CT Map Scan Png 1000w Csedits
Draw a Memory Map of Your Unique Neighborhood
Sample Project 1500px
Recipe: Make Your Own Building Ornaments
Blueprints Page 6 1500px
How to Make a Blueprint Drawing
Donate To Architecture At Home
Help Us Empower the Next Generation of Architects
3 Create Bldg Parts 1500px
Make a Pop-Up Building From a Paper Bag
3 texture rubbings 1200px
Drawing Activity: Building Textures
landscape plan sample color 1500px
Drawing Activity: Design A Park
Morris Jumel Mansion Photo 1500px
How to Draw Buildings
Drawing Activity Looking Out My Window 1500px
Drawing Activity: Looking Outside My Window
A collage of silhouettes of architectural building parts that appear in the scavenger hunt activity
Architectural Scavenger Hunt in Greenwich Village
ABCs of Architecture bay window 1500px
ABC’s of Architecture: Illustrated Building Parts