Year 6 from St Paul’s CE Primary collect the award for Best Class Response
LOM was delighted to see their partnered class, St. Paul’s CE Primary School, crowned Overall Winner and receive the Best Class Response Award at yesterday evening’s Architecture in Schools: Primary Awards 2015 hosted by the Canary Wharf Group.
The event held in the East Wintergarden, Canary Wharf, was the culmination of architecture charity Open-City’s summer programme, Architecture in Schools, which teams-up architecture practices and local primary schools to teach pupils about the built environment. Over 150 competition entries were submitted for the brief ‘Design a City home for City Bees, Birds and Bugs’ by 750 children from 19 London schools.
The winning entry ‘Double Bee’ by year six pupils Najifa, Isha, Saniya, Riva, Mayling and Aisha from St Paul’s Primary with support from LOM architect, Annie Lieu, is a honey bee hive, praised by the judges for an “imaginative design and a lovely drawing. It has brought together all the various aspects of this competition and even though this one is a real challenge to make a model, it will be excellent to see bought to life.”
Aisha, a member of the winning team, said: “I was really happy and excited when I won. I will definitely come back to St. Paul’s to see my bee hive made in real life.” Her teacher Kirsty Walker added: “The children really enjoyed looking at architecture and then designing their own piece. The different stages were well thought out and they experienced different activities that they would not normally get to do. It was fantastic and to win made it even more amazing.”
Annie said: “I was thrilled that ‘Double Bee’ was chosen as the overall winner! It was fulfilling to support the girls’ learning and help develop their initial design into something not only creative but also a functional home and workplace for their honeybee client. The concept began as a single hemisphere but evolved when the girls discovered that the queen and her workers require different atmospheres. Through zoning and stitching together the different environments needed for the two bees they established the ‘Double Bee’.
It is the first year LOM architecture and design has taken part in Architecture in Schools. In addition to the competition the programme included a school trip to the Royal College of Physicians headquarters in Regent’s Park and a model making workshop back in the class room.
Since beginning ten years ago 35,000 primary and secondary school pupils from across London have taken part in Architecture in Schools and Open-City’s other educational programmes such as Archikids festival and Open-House.