Architecture Day with STORE

This year’s architecture day, run by Rain Wu and James Shaw from STORE CIC a London-based association of artists, architects and designers, was an exciting, and very absorbing, hands on practical workshop for prospective architecture and design students.  An enthusiastic group of Lower Sixth took part collaborating closely to create their version of a full scale arch for Headington.  After the introduction to the brief from Rain and James, the students quickly got down to work experimenting with ways of turning lengths of spaghetti fixed with plasticine into architectural maquettes. The pasta broke and the structures came tumbling down, stretching both patience and imagination, however, through trial and error a design was formulated combining some of the best features of several maquettes.

The students split into two teams and after some lively discussion to ensure their two sections would fit together, they successfully built a base and towers for the arch aluminium tubing Risking the weather, but still unsure exactly how to span their arch, they moved outside and began to build full size using lengths of aluminium joined with tape wrapped in protective foil.  Once the base and towers were complete, the ideas for the top of the arch were evolved practically through review and debate.  Higher and higher they went, climbing ladders to complete the fixings and the higher they built the more exciting the structure became. Everyone pulled together working extremely hard to get finished as the weather began to change.  Undeterred by the wind and rain, the group pushed on to complete the top section. Finally, very wet, but extremely proud and satisfied the builders of “ The Arc de Headington” went inside to dry off after a very informative, enjoyable and fun day thanks to Rain and James.