Antoni Gaudí (Spanish Architect) inspired building models

FINISHED PRODUCTS! I am incredibly proud of our 5th graders, these are MASTERPIECES! 

This past summer I was lucky enough to visit the city of Barcelona, Spain. On my visit I was able to see, first hand, the beauty of an ancient city with all its absolutely gorgeous architecture. One of the most famous architects of Barcelona is Antoni Gaudí. The students have been given a powerpoint presentation in which they learned about the life and artwork of Antoni Gaudí. In this presentation, I was able to show the students pictures that I took myself while I toured Barcelona. Gaudí's buildings can be seen from a mile away because of their distinct shape, color and beautiful mosaic tiling. They are so very different then the other buildings surrounding them and like I told the students, on the next level of beauty compared to the rest of the architecture in the city. Gaudí had a very particular style, all of his buildings were inspired by nature and he hardly used any hard straight lines. Instead, he used flowing, organic lines. After the powerpoint, the students were put into groups and told they are going to design their very own models of buildings. Over the last month, I have collected many recycled objects including water bottles, toilet paper and paper towel tubes, cardboard, egg cartons and shoe boxes etc. The groups will put these objects together  by taping them to form a building. After their design has been turned into a 3D object, the students will use plaster crafting gauze to cover their buildings and make them into a more realistic form. After the gauze have dried into a hard casting, the students will paint and decorate their buildings using acrylic paint. Finally they will mosaic the outside of their buildings to complete the final stage of this project. Each group also completed a creative writing component of this project by writing a few sentences about their buildings "function". See photos for the writing assignments! 

Learning Objectives:

• How to create a sculpture using recycled objects
• brainstorming and working with a group of other students to create an artwork.
• Architecture and its techniques and processes.
• creating an artwork in the style of an artist.

ART WORDS:
Architecture: both the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing buildings and other physical structures.
Blue print: design or plan of the building an architect is creating. 
Mosaic: the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials


Click on the link below to view the powerpoint presentation the students received including images of Antoni Gaudí's artwork.
/uploads/3/9/1/4/39148519/antoni_gaudi.pptx

A BIG THANK YOU TO THE HOOPER FAMILY FOR DONATING TILES TO BE SMASHED TO COMPLETE THIS PROJECT!

See below for photos of the process!