by Catherine Teegarden Center for Architecture Foundation
Summer@theCenter 2008.
Photos by Center for Architecture Foundation staff
Remember the excitement you felt when you first started noticing design in the world around you? At the Center for Architecture this summer, young people have a chance to discover this at an early age through the Center for Architecture Foundation’s summer studios. Offered as one-week sessions for 3rd-12th graders, Summer@theCenter studios immerse young people in hands-on architecture projects that introduce them to the process of design and help them see the important role architecture plays in shaping our environment.
Programs take place at the Center and throughout the city on site visits, museum trips, and walking tours. These trips provide inspiration and information for students’ own art and design projects during the week. Each studio investigates a different topic in architecture and targets a particular age group. This summer, elementary and middle school students will explore NYC’s “Secret Places” and create their own guide to these hidden treasures, incorporating photography, drawing, pop-up techniques, and writing. Middle school students can also develop a cell phone walking tour guide to SoHo, to be enjoyed by others throughout the year, and will be included in the Center’s Context/Contrast: New Buildings in Historic Districts 1965-2009 exhibition this fall. Elementary students will also have the opportunity to create Pop Art-influenced buildings in a range of media as they consider the work of Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg, and others on trips to MoMA and the Whitney Museum. High school students can create a piece for their portfolios in our “Design/Build: Chairs” studio, in which students will construct a piece of functional furniture from corrugated cardboard.
Learning shouldn’t come to a stop in the summer, but it needs to include fun, friends, fresh air, and lots of creative exploration. Help your child discover their own design sensibilities in a Summer@theCenter studio. Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and space is limited. Full program descriptions, registration and tuition information are at www.cfafoundation.org.
Catherine Teegarden is the director of Programs@theCenter at the Center for Architecture Foundation.