For the second year, Grade 11 and 12 high school students were drafting, drawing and making building models as a part of a summer camp hosted by Laurentian University’s McEwen School of Architecture (MSOA) in Sudbury, Ont.
The intent of the five-day, 9 to 5 p.m. camps, which were held over the summer, is to give students a taste of what the architectural profession is all about. Many of those students are from remote areas in Ontario, where insight into the field is limited.
“We’re acutely aware of the lack of knowledge of architecture as a potential career path,” in Sudbury and northern Ontario, says Louis-Pierre Bélec, co-ordinator of ArchiNorth and assistant professor at MSOA.
He says in large cities such as Toronto high school students are more apt to be exposed to the field.
On the first day of summer camp participants are asked to reflect on the built environment of their own communities, to think about what they think is lacking, what they would like to change, Bélec says.
“It becomes the basis for their week-long project.”
Over the five days they are exposed to fundamentals, including drafting and model-making. While participants get an introduction to rendering software, most of their work is done with physical tools and paper.
“You have to have prior knowledge to be able to do digital modelling, drawing conventions and projections,” says the camp co-ordinator.
The architectural school offers a deeper dive into drawing styles and different ways of making models through an advanced five-day camp.
Participants collaborate on designs and through small teams where they make three projects or “small installations.
“They produce drawings that can be built and that people will be able to inhabit.”
Those projects are part of an exhibition for families and the community at the end of the camp, says Bélec.
When the students complete the camp, they are given drawing instruments, a T-square and the basics to start “replicating what we’ve done” which can help them build portfolios to use when applying to architecture schools such as McEwen, says Bélec.
This year the camp has 52 first-time participants and 12 returning from last year. Many are from all over Ontario while three are from Quebec and one from Alberta. Last year a student from Kenya, who was visiting family in Ontario, attended the camp.
Of the 20 or so Grade 12 participants last year, eight have applied and were accepted to the MSOA’s bachelor of architecture program.
Bélec says the registration fee of $350 for the first session is the lowest of any architecture camp in Ontario. Camps are taught in English or French.
Students can stay in the university’s dorms at reduced fees. Local architectural societies in the north sponsor up to five students.
In a survey, Bélec says almost all of the camp participants said the experience made them more likely to apply to MSOA and all of them said they would recommend the camp to others.
The camp has not only drawn high school students. Some parents say that they would have signed up for the camp if it was available when they were in high school, says Bélec.
“We had an accounting professor who said he wished all programs had something similar, an immersive experience that students could try it out before making that leap to college or university.”
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