Work Experience at Shape Architecture

Shape Architecture has just provided work experience for three local school children during the month of July.  Every year we host a number of local students keen on studying architecture, and this is something we enjoy doing as a practice.  We put a great deal of effort and support into these weeks and feel that both the students and ourselves gain much from this period.  Each year we set a design task as the core activity and a series of smaller tasks to ensure as wide an experience as possible is offered.

This year’s design task was to design a self-sufficient house on an island in the middle of a lake using local materials.  On day one with our first student we quickly decided that a real location should be selected and so a small island on Loch Maree in the Highlands was chosen. 

The process, at our request, started with hand drawing as an initial way to quickly express a number of design ideas and then once a design was chosen was developed as a 3D computer model.  The model became quite detailed and was an excellent way for each student to explore their design and also to communicate their work but to the school.  We were very impressed as ever with the quality of design work and the speed in which each student learnt new fairly complex software. 

Other supporting tasks included writing an essay on the history and application of glass and researching companies who specialise in sustainable materials.  Both areas which interest us as a practice. 

Below we show the three designs.