In Evanston Illinois, two teachers have built an unusual and fantastic new high school course called “Geometry in Construction” (GiC). A hands-on course, GiC integrates Geometry and Construction topics where kids actually BUILD a structure – a real construction project. Kids will engage in their learning and be able to build something useful in the […]
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Why a Purple Hotel?
Outside of Chicago, a hotel was built in 1962. Everyone who ever saw it remembers it. It was purple. Bright, shocking, and no-doubt-about-it-PURPLE. The original architect, John Macsai, never planned on it being that color. So how did it happen? How does a building end up not being what the architect designed? As the Purple […]
PreFab-ulous
Prefab is fab-ulous, right? Why? Because it allows for buildings to be built more cheaply and quickly than traditional construction. Walls can be built in factories and the wiring and plumbing pipes can be installed inside of the walls and then these walls can be shipped to the building site and then assembled into a […]
A Great Architecture Book
[amazon_link id=”0547238924″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]This book, titled “If you Lived Here: Houses of the World” [amazon_link id=”0547238924″ target=”_blank” ]”If You Lived Here: Houses of the World”[/amazon_link] has fantastic illustrations. They are collages that are intricate, accurate and colorful, and in real life they are 3-D. Houses of the world includes structures from Spain, South Africa, Canada […]
Ghostly Structure in the Woods
This beautiful glowing structure is not as scary as it might look – located in the middle of a redwood forest, it is illuminated from within and seems to be from another world. It is a structure that is made from, of all things, a 3-D printer. If you have not heard of them yet, […]
Architecture Video Candy
This video is so sweet, you may just want to eat it for a snack. It is an alphabet video of famous architects and a building that they built. It is simple and colorful and the buildings are a bit jumpy and excited. It is as if they are jumping for joy to be included […]
Watch a City Grow
The folks at a company called Cube Cities have made some interesting videos that illustrate the growth of some big cities – so you can watch a flat city without structures “grow” buildings and become a metropolis. With bold colored boxes representing the heights of buildings that sprang up over time, you can see the […]
Camp for Architecture
Oh it is so frustrating that we don’t live in Hong Kong, and that it is so far away. In Hong Kong, an architectural design firm, called James Cybertecture Firm offers a very interesting program for kids to learn about the built environment and buildings. No, we have not attended the class nor have our […]
Betts House in Cincinnati
A small museum, called the Betts House, in Cincinnati has a focus on buildings and construction. The museum hosts exhibits and programs on architecture, historic preservation, building trades and materials, and construction technologies, all in the oldest brick structure in that Ohio city. They have their own exhibits, including one about a huge earthquake in […]
This One is Going Down.
Prentiss Women’s Hospital has been around since 1974, designed by a famous Chicago architect named Bertrand Goldberg. I bet Bert did not figure that his building would not last forever – or even for a century when it was constructed. He is no longer alive and his building will soon be dead too, when it […]