MYP 4: Informal Cities

MYP 4 students are currently exploring the culture and environments of slums, informal cities, squatter communities, around the world in unison with Humanities in order to gain a deeper understanding of how and why 2 billion people live in these conditions. In this term's unit, "Urban Planning and Design for Small and Shrinking Spaces", students will be researching and designing innovative solutions to answer this question:

How are designs and plans being adapted to

accommodate the loss of space in dense urban areas?

Homework for Thursday:

1) Students, please research your chosen city slum (see me if you forgot). In your process journal complete the table listing the following (applied to your city):

Necessities of City                           Problems Facing My City Slum

List what a city needs                              What problems do you face
(look at notes, lists &                              as a citizen of your informal

think about discussions in class.                                city?                     

2) Write a narrative answering the following questions in the first person as if you are a citizen of the informal city you have been assigned. Be creative using actual facts you have found in your research. Remember you are trying to look through the eyes of a person your age living in that city community. If you have trouble, please reflect upon the life you lead, remember the videos we watched and think about how life could be different.

• What does my neighborhood look like? What is my culture? Where is it located? (Country, culture, geography, language, location, neighborhood description and views).
• What are my living conditions like? My home? Who do I live with?
• What is my typical day like?
• What do I love about this place? What is special? What is beautiful?
• What problems do I face? What challenges do I have in my daily life? (Think compared to your own)
• What do I wish I had access to? If I could change 5 things in my community, what would they be and why?
• *You may add images to your blog post that you have found.
• *Add links to the bottom of your blog post that share where you got your research from.

Some links to help you in your research, though you may use your own.

Informal City (slum) Life

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duJUvvXvN40
• http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/11/third-world-slums-biz-cx_21cities_ee_0611slums.html

Robert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9-zPe7FRag
• http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_neuwirth_on_our_shadow_cities.html
• His Blog: http://squattercity.blogspot.com/

Last Tourist in Cairo, Egypt

• http://roadtrip.submarinechannel.com/content/view.jsp?itemid=4029&mapsize=mega

The Places We Live

• http://www.theplaceswelive.com/

Urban Growth Interactive Map on BBC

• http://www.theplaceswelive.com/

Urban Think Tank in Caraca, Venezuela

• http://www.youtube.com/user/UrbanThinkTank

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGKPWlUfaL0

MYP 1: Interior Design - What are Styles? How do I begin to form my ideas?

Before I say anything, thank you Mara Di Venanza for speaking to us on Wednesday and sharing her expertise in Kitchen Design! I don't know about you, but I learned a LOT. What a fun job that would be!

You are just beginning the work with your client. While you continue to gather information about their needs and the space, you should start learning about and thinking about styles. There are many "styles" found in Interior Design.

Some examples are: Contemporary, Asian, Country/Rustic, Minimalistic, Mediterranean, English and Romantic to name a few. Some designers specialize in a few specific styles, others are more adventurous and mix and match according to their tastes and their clients' personality.

Before you can communicate your vision, you need to actually discover what your options are. So, using the worksheet handed to you in class, you will be researching styles this week and building an "Inspiration Sample Board".

First:

Look through magazines. What are you drawn to? Look at furniture, spaces, shapes, textures, colors. Tear them out, collect and spread them out in front of you. Do you see a trend? Are you drawn to particular things?

Second:

Using poster board provided by Ms. Filiz, use glue to create a collage of all of your "inspiration". You may decide to do more than one. Overlap, create patterns...be creative with your inspiration board! Remember this is something that you would want to hang in your "office" and look at when you need an idea boost! 

Third:

Study your collage. What would you call the styles in your inspiration board? Think about your client and their space. What would work well?

Fourth:

Move to the Design Style & Inspiration Board Handout to complete this phase of the project. You will investigate and learn about the different styles that interior designers often use! This will help you narrow down your vision for the space!

Links to help you:

• HGTV Designer's Portfolio (tip: scroll down till you see "Browse Styles")
• Interior Design Tutor (Scroll down for styles. Left hand bar has more options to explore) 
• Love To Know Interior Design (A looong list of Styles!)  

Other helpful links

• HGTV Decorating (for all things Decorating)
• HGTV Photo Gallery (Great photos! Print out to add to your inspiration board!) 

This should be enough to get you started. Feel free to Google and explore the web for ideas on your own. We'll spend a lot of time in the computer lab the next few weeks!


P.S. Homework to complete this week!

Have you...

• Finished taking photos of the room? Remember to put them on your data key.
• Finished measuring all parts of the room?
• Completed the 5 diagrams of the room? 1- Floor plan showing all structural walls and components (doors, windows). 4- Vertical wall views showing measurement. All diagrams must be finalized in pencil on graph paper (provided...ask for more!) and be to scale. Include a scale key on your diagram so we know what the scale actually is! (Ex: 1 square = 12" inches or 1' foot) This is where the Math from Mr. Joe comes in!
  
• Process Journal entry: List & explain 5 things you learned from Ms. Mara's presentation on Wednesday.
• Complete questions 1-3 in your Design Folder.

Whew! That's a lot. But you must keep up. See me for extra help.

MYP 5: Architecture for Humanity

Hello MYP 5 students...future architects for humanity. In this unit "Architecture For Humanity" we are exploring a few questions.

Can architects be humanitarians?

How can architecture protect people & communities while being socially responsible?

Is design a luxury or a necessity? 

For Tuesday, please read the article I gave you on the San Fransisco earthquake (or view it here), and watch Cameron Sinclair speak again on TED (link below). Visit his organization website, Architecture for Humanity (below), and look through his completed/in progress/proposed projects. Choose one that interests you. 

Write a blog entry which explains what you think a humanitarian architect does, who they help, and why they are important. Add a link to one of the projects you chose from Cameron Sinclair's organization website.

See you Tuesday!!

Cameron Sinclair - An open source, humanitarian architect. 

2006 TED Prize winner Cameron Sinclair is co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit that seeks architecture solutions to global crises -- and acts as a conduit between the design community and the world's humanitarian needs.

Watch him speak on TED

http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_sinclair_on_open_source_architecture.html

More about Cameron Sinclair:

http://www.ted.com/speakers/cameron_sinclair.html

http://www.cameronsinclair.com/index.php?q=/about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Sinclair

Natural Disasters and how it changed our view on Humanitarian architecture

http://www.worldchanging.com/

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004656.html

Architecture for Humanity

http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/

Projects:

http://architectureforhumanity.org/projects

http://architectureforhumanity.org/projects/completed

http://architectureforhumanity.org/projects/chapters

http://grenada-r3.org/initiatives.htm

MYP 4 & 5: Polls & Surveys

Polls, or surveys, are an effective way to collect information from other people. They are used in many forms and for different purposes, by governments, businesses, and academics, in addition to collecting personal opinions on social matters. Chances are that you have participated in a poll or survey.

To finish up our unit on Public Service Announcements, you will each be creating a survey of your own. It must have at least 5 questions but no more than 10. We will be using www.surveymonkey.com but there are dozens of other online options that you can use in the future. It is a great tool to gain feedback on your work and with the internet, you have the capability of collecting information from people far and wide!

The assignment:

1. Create a survey on www.surveymonkey.com. You will need to create an account (which requires only an email address). Click on "create a survey".

2. Create at least 5 questions. At least 2 must be open ended (meaning that you leave the answer up to the audience). Think about what kind of feedback would be helpful to you. Remember the whole purpose of the PSA was to communicate a message. You each chose a topic that meant something to you and decided on a method of storytelling to most effectively communicate your purpose. You also had a target audience. Ask yourself: What are you trying to say? What are you hoping the audience will walk away with? How can you improve?

3. For examples and ideas you can look at my survey.

Click here to take my survey!

Also check out the Examples that Survey Monkey gives you on its websites of the different kinds of questions you can ask. The phrasing of your question is important. You want to make sure you get the information you are looking for. Sometimes being specific is important. Other times leaving the question open-ended invites helpful feedback you may not have otherwise received.

4. Finished? Click on "collect responses". It will generate a link that you can copy and paste into an email and websites. It will look like the text below. For this class you are required to post it on your blog but may email people if you choose to.

	Create a link to send in your own email message or to place on a webpage
	The simplest and fastest way to collect responses. We generate a link for your survey that you can just copy and paste.

5. Create a blog entry and explain a little about your PSA. Include the title. Include the link to your survey and ask visitors to kindly take your survey after watching your PSA. Publish your video below your text.


6. Log back in to Survey Monkey to "analyze results". It's very interesting and exciting to get feedback this way on your work.

Read through your results and hand in your typed self evaluation latest by Tuesday, January 19th.

** As a reminder, your self evaluation must be done AFTER the survey responses are collected. Hand in a copy of your survey questions along with the answers to the following questions TYPED:

1. What is the message from your finished PSA? Is it different from your original intention?

2. Who is your target audience? From your survey results, did you reach your target audience? Did they understand your message?

3. What were some challenges you ran into during this project? 
Think about the following stages of the Design Cycle:

• Investigate (research, choosing an issue, writing design brief)
  
• Plan (writing script, storyboard, casting, props, setting)
  
• Create (filming, timing, sources, music, editing)
  

4. If you had more time, what would you add, or change?

5. What did you learn from this project?

• About communication...
• About planning...
• Anything else...
  

Happy New Year!

Wishing you all a Happy & Positive New Year! It's 2010!

Term 2 has begun and we're going to embark on new and exciting projects. Check back to see what we finished and worked on last term. I will be posting photos and information. Also be sure to look at the student blogs by MYP 4 and 5 students who will be posting information on their Public Service Announcement videos (and Polls!) as well as Design students' personal logos "MyCons". They have worked very hard and I know we are all looking forward to turning a new leaf and starting something new!