Now available from the Chicago Architecture Foundation
The Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) has recently published The Architecture Handbook: A Student Guide to Understanding Buildings. As a college-prep architecture textbook for high school students, the book is the first of its kind and has broad applications for classrooms across the country.
A sustainable ‘green’ home serves as the book’s case study, while students also investigate their own home and 10 well-known residential buildings in the U.S. and around the world.
Designed for 10th-11th graders, The Architecture Handbook helps students explore a wide variety of disciplines with links to the built environment. Six projects make connections between architecture and design, urban planning, landscape architecture, interior design, structural engineering, and construction.
The 400-page student book and 600-page teacher edition integrate architecture throughout all the core academic subjects -- language arts, mathematics, science, social science, and fine arts. It engages students through 80 hands-on activities to teach the fundamentals of both architectural design and technical drawing.
History of the project
The Architecture Handbook grew out of two important factors. First, over the past 25 years, the Chicago Architecture Foundation and the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have worked closely together to run the Newhouse Program & Architecture Competition for Chicago high school students. This program, begun in 1982 as a one-time event, has evolved into a year-round program offering architecture skill building workshops, paid summer internships, a series of architect school visits, and a much expanded annual architecture competition. As the Newhouse Program evolved, it became evident that the CPS architectural drafting curriculum would also need to evolve to keep pace with the industry for which students were being prepared.
Second, CAF staff gained experience writing and publishing Schoolyards to Skylines: Teaching with Chicago’s Amazing Architecture, a K – 8th grade teacher resource book. Published in 2002 the book is used throughout the U.S and in 6 countries. In 2005 the American Institute of Architects (AIA) honored Schoolyards to Skylines with an Institute Honor for Collaborative Achievement.
The need for The Architecture Handbook
Based on the strength of these two primary factors, CAF opened a new dialogue about the current state of architectural education in the high schools across Chicago. In August 2004, CAF staff brought together a group that included: principals from 6 major architectural firms in Chicago, CPS administrators from the Education to Careers department, and admissions officials from Chicago-area schools of architecture.
At the time, teachers and students in CPS were using a drafting manual written in 1951 when becoming a draftsman was a viable career path after high school graduation. In the 21st century, however, the skills expected from students in any occupation have changed from those requiring replication, repetition, and memorization, to skills more relevant to an economy based on innovation, flexibility, and creativity.
At this August 2004 meeting, principals in architecture firms stated that they are looking for employees who are college graduates, with more than just drafting skills. Likewise, schools of architecture desire students who can work in teams, think critically, and creatively solve problems.
As a result, CPS administrators officially agreed to partner with CAF in this ground-breaking initiative. The big goals:
1. Create a new architectural curriculum that was both college-prep and also address concerns of colleges and future employers regarding student preparedness.
2. Teach the fundamentals of both architectural design and technical drawing.
3. Give high school students the knowledge and skills to become ‘architecturally-literate’.
The people and the process
The idea of creating an architecture curriculum for high school students based on an understanding of design, architectural history, and the technical aspects of architecture generated a great deal of excitement in the Chicago architecture community as well as within the Chicago Public Schools. Architects volunteered to help shape the content, universities agreed to help monitor student results, and the philanthropic community generously supported the writing, research, and publishing. Most importantly, the Office of Education to Careers at CPS enthusiastically endorsed the project concept and pledged support.
As project initiator and developer, the Chicago Architecture Foundation brought together a team of architects, teachers and administrators, students, and CAF staff to chart a new direction for the curriculum. Over three years, three primary advisory teams came together to brainstorm ideas, develop content, and test lessons and activities.
Architecture Professionals
More than 40 members of Chicago’s architectural, landscape architecture, and urban planning communities volunteered their time and energy to the project. These architects helped inform the content and design of the curriculum and added their valuable professional expertise. Ten of these volunteers were paired with a CPS teacher to visit their classroom and test out activities from the book.
Pilot Teacher Team
Ten teachers from Chicago Public Schools participated as part of a pilot team to test the book as it was being written. For two school years, these teachers used a working draft of the curriculum and met monthly to discuss what worked and what didn’t work. The monthly meetings were supplemented with classroom visits by CAF staff and architect volunteers. The valuable feedback provided by these teachers during the process informed key components of the textbook including, the integration of math and reading throughout and the focus on student outcomes and assessments.
Student Advisory Committee
At the onset of the project, 14 students from across Chicago were invited for the first student advisory team meeting. The intention was for the students to meet quarterly to test out lessons and provide creative feedback. The students decided that, to be more effective, they had to meet once a week. For an entire school year, a core of 6 students came to CAF every Monday to test out activities and give feedback.
Student edition content and features
The Architecture Handbook is organized into 6 projects: The Block Plan, the Site Plan, the Floor Plan, the Elevation, the Building Section, and the Design Project. Chapters within the projects focus on the critical concepts found in each type of architectural drawing.
Project 1/The Block Plan, for example, helps students explore the different skills that are critical in understanding how a street is organized, why it looks the way it does, and the larger neighborhood context where the home stands. ‘Big Questions’ within the Block Plan chapters include:
* How do various maps help explain the existing area surrounding a new building?
* How do you read and draw a block plan?
* What is meant by scale?
* What maps and other tools are used to document the types of buildings on the block?
* What clues tell you if your block was originally designed for people on foot or people in cars?
The Architecture Handbook uses the F10 House, an 1800 sq. ft. award-winning green home in Chicago, as its case study building. The house, designed by EHDD Architecture, takes its name from the concept that it was designed to reduce its environmental impact by a factor of 10 compared to the average American home.
Sustainability and green architecture are woven throughout the entire book. Students are introduced to issues such as: connections to public transportation, permeable landscapes, floor plan design, passive heating and cooling systems, module construction, green roofs, and recycled materials.
As the theme of the book is “homes on the block”, students are also introduced to 10 significant homes in the U.S. and around the world. Each chapter in Projects 2 – 5 compares the F10 House with one of these famous homes and with the student’s own home. Students compare and contrast homes by Wright, Le Corbusier, Palladio, Mies van der Rohe, Murcutt, Legorreta, and Perkins Will.
Throughout each chapter, architecture vocabulary/definitions and an extensive list of resources help students investigate ideas further. The ‘On Your Way Home’ and ‘Talk About It’ sections, as well as the ‘Try It!’ activities help students make connections to their own world.
Reading and math are integrated throughout the book to reinforce essential student skills. Each chapter includes a 500-700 word reading with comprehension and analysis questions, as well as 10-15 math problems that tie directly to the big architectural ideas.
Teacher edition features
A 600-page teacher edition in a 3-ring binder contains more than 60 hands-on classroom activities, including: step-by-step instructions, skills list, all handouts, discussion points, and assessment tools. The Short Activities (1-2 class periods) and Long Activities (2-3 class periods) make connections to state drafting standards, core subject academic standards, and technological literacy standards. All of the student pages are reproduced within the teacher book.
The teacher edition also includes a CD-ROM with activity image sets, a full set of construction drawings for the case study home, and four integrated projects: social sciences, life science, language arts, and chemistry. These projects are designed to help core subject teachers connect architecture to what they already teach and reinforce the academic standards. Each 3- to 4-day lesson was developed with guidance from an advisory team of teachers in that subject.
To find out more about the textbook, see sample lessons and a table of contents, or order copies visit www.architecture.org/archhandbook.
Jennifer Masengarb, author, and Krisann Rehbein, project coordinator for The Architecture Handbook are Education Specialists at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. They can be reached at education@architecture.org or 312.922.3432 x246.
