Saturday, July 28, 2012

Antoni Gaudi Architecture & Sculpture

Grades 3-5

Based on the great architect Antoni Gaudi and his famous, organically derived buildings and sculptures like the mosaic lizard found in Spain. Students made 3 projects: a collaborative lizard, individual animal sculptures, and recycled buildings.

Collaborative Lizard

This large, 5' creature had an under-stucture that the students broke apart in groups to make. By twisting and crumpling recycled brown butcher paper, taping other recycled cardboard pieces to it, the lizard's torso, tail, arms & legs, head and spikes quickly came together. The next process included using liquid starch to adhere more recycled and soaked strips of cardboard boxes acting as a paper mache base for the paper collaging that occurred in the final stage. The mosaic tiling that Gaudi uses in his architecture was the basis for the decor of this lizard.

Individual Mosaic Animals

As a side project, students used the same method described above to make their own small sculpture. Here are some examples:

Gaudi Inspired Buildings

We started by studying slides of the inspiration Gaudi used for his architecture. Gaudi derived much of his artistic style from observations he made from nature, so his architecture resembled shapes, lines and patterns that would be found in various geographic terrains like oceans, forests, and textures found on animals. After completion, we assembled all of the buildings together to make a city, and constructed a recycled tree as another side project. Below are examples.