This week I am co-teaching a class at the
Knoxville Museum of Art as part of their
Summer Art Academy program. The class is made up of 8 girls and 2 boys. It covers both architecture and interior design and I am working with another architect on the "architecture" section. We have 3 days to work with them for a couple of hours each day. We taught them about architecture and what architects do at the begining and then threw them right into a project after that...sort of like real life. We gave them a program of designing a house for the New Orleans area that had been a
design competition and had them draw a floor plan and elevation of their designs. To give inspiration, my co-teacher (Richard Allen Foster) had cards made of different furniture pieces and told them to pick out one that they liked and try to incorporate the shape, style, colors and/or materials into their project.
It has been fun to try to explain scale and lingo like "plan view" and "elevations" to them. I have been impressed with how fast they have picked up on it and what they are able to accomplish. One kid brought in legos to build a model of his design. It did degrade to the building of cars by the time class was half way through today but he was back on track after snack.
We were a little mean and gave them homework the first night. They had to draw a room in their house to scale so that they could get a sense of how it would translate from real life to paper. These are some smart kids and most seem to enjoy the class for the architecture part as well as the interior design portion. I think we may have a few future architects sitting at these tables. Should I warn them now about what they are in for? ...nah.
Every year that Ivan Allen has held it, I have participated in it...the annual East Tennessee Children's Hospital Pumpkin Decorating Contest. This year I have gone on a little different track than I normally do and have done one that might be considered creepy. I saw the idea last year for spider sacks as home decoration but interpreted with a pumpkin for this year's entry. The intent was for the pumpkin to remain very prominent in the final design. I think I did an ok hybrid. The purpose of all of this is that all the pumpkins decorated for the event are taken to Children's Hospital the next day and put on display for the kids areas. I have never gone to track them down in the hospital but maybe I will investigate this year. It is a great event that Ivan Allen puts together for architects and interior designers in the area. It allows us to be creative for a cause. 
