Architects for a day

MOSCOW — Swimming pools. A movie theater. A petting zoo.

These are just some of the ideas that McDonald Elementary School fifth graders would incorporate into their dream school if they could.

On Friday, they were allowed to indulge in those dreams as part of a project with Moscow architecture firm Knit Studios.

Knit project manager Drew Davis and his coworkers came to the Moscow school to teach students the basics of architecture and help them create floor plans and models of their own school.

“Architecture is very creative in nature and kids are very creative,” Davis said. “So we wanted to teach them more.”

Davis said architects need to do a better job of engaging with the public, and projects like these can help younger children understand how architecture affects the spaces around them.

“The spaces that we live, work and play in need to be designed well,” he said.

Davis said they conducted the same project at Russell Elementary last week and plan to visit other schools next year.

Knit design associate LaRae Tomera said they are teaching students how to draw a floor plan, a site plan and a 3-D model of their dream schools. She said the students are allowed to tell their own story with their design plans, which lets them “have authorship in whatever they make.”

Fifth grader Clayton Halladay said his classmates learned how to determine the height, width and all the angles of the buildings.

Halladay, who enjoys math and spelling, said his dream school would be similar to most school buildings, except that it would include rooms dedicated to spelling bees and math Olympiads.

Fifth grader Lexi Foutch’s dream school would be animal-friendly. She wants the school to have its own hamster with a free roaming hamster ball, an area designated for sloths and a pond.

“It’s super fun,” she said about the project.

Students Austin Fletcher and Braxton Brown sat together in Staci Brandner’s class drawing and coloring the site plans for their schools.

Fletcher’s school would be designed around activities and include a swimming pool, Nerf arena and a gym.

Brown’s school would have all the staples of a typical school like a lunch room, gym and teachers lounge. Additionally, it would include a petting zoo.

Brandner said she appreciated this project because it may open her students’ eyes to careers they may not have thought about before.

“I was really excited to see how it would turn out because we’ve never done anything like this before,” she said.

Students in Caitlin Murray’s and Heidi Broenneke’s classes also participated in the project.

Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.