Videos
Maggie’s: Why red
Running time: 01:01
Maggie’s: Outside wall
Running time: 00:36
Channel 4: Touch down room
Running time: 00:25
KS3 Curriculum Links
Art and Design: Critical understanding 1.4b
Engage with ideas, images and artefacts, and identifying how values and meanings are conveyed.
Design and Technology: Designing and making 1.2c
Understand that products and systems have an impact on quality of life.
Design and Technology: Creativity 1.3c
Explore and experiment with ideas, materials, technologies and techniques.
Geography: Cultural understanding and diversity 1.7a
Appreciate the differences and similarities between people, places, environments and cultures to inform their understanding of societies and economies.
KS4 Curriculum Links
Mathematics: Representing 2.1b
Compare and evaluate representations of a situation before making a choice.
Key words
Decoration: elements added to the building to give it a particular ‘look’ or feel.
Activity
Preparation: Choose two different spaces in the building, which have contrasting ‘feels’ such as the interior and exterior or a public space and a private space.
Materials: Clipboards, coloured pencils, pens, paper.
Steps:
- Take the group outside the building to look at its exterior.
- Ask students to draw a sketch elevation, using a simple shape outline.
- Students should annotate the drawing labeling the different materials they can spot, and any signs, artwork or shapes.
- For each one, they should take a rubbing with chalk, charcoal or coloured pencils and label it with the material name and location in the building.
- Take the group back inside the building.
- Ask students to draw a sketch elevation of the inside space, using a simple shape outline.
- Students should annotate the drawing labeling the different materials they can spot.
- In small groups students can compare their two drawings and discuss why different materials might have been used for the
- different spaces.
- Ask students to come up with three words to describe the overall palette of materials for the building.
- Suggest they consider the impact of the choice of materials on the:
- Building’s function: are the materials practical for the activities that take place in the space?
- Building’s public image: if the materials are to a building what clothes are to a person, what do they say about the building?
- Surrounding area’s cultural landscape: where else have they seen similar materials being used? Are they typical or unusual for a building in that area?