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| Lily, Grade 6, Drafting a Template for the John Hancock Tower |
I was lucky enough to see the Hokusai exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston this summer. Besides his famous woodblock prints, like
The Great Wave off Kanagawa, they were exhibiting some of his paper dioramas. I thought they looked like something that would be a fun project for art class, and I thought about how it was a good way for students to practice thinking spatially. They would have to plan in 2-D to build in 3-D. When I read about it, I learned that this Japanese art, tatebanko, is having a resurgence in popularity because you can post templates online, print them out, and build models from the templates. When Ms. Gow told me that the middle school would be going on an architecture tour of Chicago, I decided we could collaborate by having students make dioramas of famous Chicago buildings. As a result, the middle schoolers are researching, drafting and building models of a variety of buildings from our skyline. I let them look at some patterns from
buildyourownchicago.com , but I challenged them to just get ideas from these patterns rather than using these printed templates. Their buildings all look different, but they are so much more interesting to see than if they all used a pre-drawn template. They built a tatebanko box, and are creating scenes they will place their buildings in. Here are a few "architects" at work:
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| Tatebanko, The Japanese Art of Paper Dioramas, Hokusai |
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| Melanie, Grade 6, The Chicago Theater |
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| Xithaly, Grade 6, Harold Washington Library |
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| Manuel, Grade 6, Aqua Tower and John Hancock |
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| Rylee, Grade 6, Federal Center |
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| Monica, Grade 6, Willis Tower and John Hancock |
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| Rylee added a Calder Flamingo to his Federal Center scene. |
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| Antonio, Grade 6, Constructing a Tatebanko Box |
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