Thursday 16 January heralded Architecture Day 2020, which was delivered by The Design Department and some really talented GDST alumnae who are architects, engineers and professional designers.

With over 110 Year 6 and 8 students working together in one room all day, it promised to be organised chaos – and was! Students worked in mixed teams of six to design and build a tower from newspaper and masking tape. The brief was for the tower to be as tall as possible and be self-supporting. The winning teams were awarded prizes for elegance, innovation and triangulation.

Following a quick break, students then divided again into groups of three and were given a brief to design and make a model of part of a school – a library, chemistry lab or chill out zone for example. Buildings from around the world were shown during a presentation and our guests: Fran Payne, Katie McAdam and Nisha Vekaria gave talks on what they had designed and built as further inspiration.

Once again the outcomes were from the practical to the insane and made us wonder how each team having similar design briefs could produce such diversity!  At the end of the day we assembled “our school” together before a proper critique of the designs with some fantastic questions, answers and explanations of design decisions. Parents were well represented in the gallery and came down to have a closer look with a cup of tea or coffee. An exhausting, but worthwhile day. Next year pledges to be more sustainable. Watch this (architectural) space…