Designing structures and building friendships

The first four weeks of Sheridan’s architecture programs build a foundation for studies in the planning, design and creation of structures.

The fifth is spent building a community.

“We want our students, faculty and staff to feel like they’re part of a family,” School of Architectural Technology Acting Associate Dean Shannon Pirie says of Architecture Week, an annual event during which students from across all years of Sheridan’s architecture programs — including the new Urban Design graduate certificate — collaborate in a variety of hands-on learning activities. “It’s important that everyone has someone they feel they can go to with questions or for support or to have a laugh with.”

In one of this year’s Architecture Week exercises, students worked in teams to draw a full-scale wall section of a three-storey building. The wall sections were then taped together to form 30-foot-long drawings that teams draped from the staircase in the A Wing atrium at Hazel McCallion Campus (HMC).

Other activities included building roof structures out of coffee stir sticks, elastic bands and pins; an AutoCAD and Audodesk Revit drawing assignment; a lecture by guest speaker Robert McKaye, Senior Manager, Planning and Design of The Bentway project in Toronto; and tours of downtown Toronto, the Mississauga Art Gallery and HMC’s new $43-million Student Centre — a project that was managed by Sheridan graduate Lucas Laurenssen (Architectural Technology ’10). The week concluded with a design charrette that saw students apply non-traditional thinking to build model structures out of tarp and magazines, with prizes awarded to the top creations.

“These exercises ask a lot of our first-semester students who have only been studying architectural technology for four weeks, but our third-semester and fifth-semester students can hop in and help,” Pirie says.

“Often times, the best ways for students to learn is from each other,” adds professor Dan Acimovic. “There’s also a lot of bonding that goes on during Architecture Week, and we often find that it brings first-year students out of their shell.”

Learn more about Sheridan's architecture programs:

• Architectural Technician diploma
• Architectural Technology advanced diploma
• Urban Design graduate certificate