Salvadori Center: Programs

In the LEAD Program [Learning through Engineering, Architecture and Design], Salvadori educators will to come to your classroom to develop and co-teach projects based on the built environment that will engage and delight your students.

In order to ensure success, we strongly suggest 1) a two-hour professional development session so that our staff and the Salvadori architect-educator have time to prepare the project, 2) an extended class period (an hour to an hour-and-a-half is optimal), and 3) a commitment from the teacher(s) to co-teach the projects.

LEAD programs are typically 8 weeks long. For shorter or longer programs, please contact Executive Director Dr. Leonisa Ardizzone.

Topic

Bridges -- Using simple, everyday materials and the basic principles of tension and compression, students will design and build functioning bridges. Along the way they will learn basic mathematical formulas, the physical properties of materials, and the interrelationship of design and structure.
Skyscrapers -- Students will study and analyze skyscrapers to learn more about their importance and relevance in the built environment. They will also investigate the skyscraper's history and engineering, and end the program with a display of skyscrapers that they have built to different scales and incorporating differing design techniques.
"Dream" Houses -- If there is an American Dream, it revolves around the home, and in this program students will design their "dream home." They will work up their idea into sketches that will turn into floor plans drawn to scale and design a "program" for their structures. Finally, they will build and display their homes.
Green Design and Construction -- This program focuses on teaching students the science, technology, and principles of "green design," an architectural and engineering approach that stresses recycling, reuse, and renewal.
2D to 3D -- Students will work learn the difference between shapes and forms (as well as 2D and 3D), then work with templates/nets to create shapes out of the forms they have studied.
My Community -- Maps are attempts to capture the complexity of the world into easy-to-read-forms, and doing this requires a subtle interplay of math (scale/proportion), history, and science (geology, topology). Students will learn how to make a variety of maps, some of them charting their classrooms or communities, others using one or more of the five senses to map spaces and sensations.
Simple Machines -- Beginning with a study of the six simple machines, students will then design their own machines by combining and extending them. In the process they will learn engineering history, the design process, and useful mathematics.

Full-Day or Half-Day

Full-Day (4 classes per day)
Half-Day (2 classes per day

Days Of The Week [subject to availability]

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday

Fees

• Half-day Professional Development session: $400.

• Per session costs: Half-Day - $400; Full-Day - $700

• Materials cost: $125 per class per project (price may vary dependent upon project)

To arrange for a LEAD Program at your school, please contact Executive Director Dr. Leonisa Ardizzone to make arrangements. Her email is ardizzone@salvadori.org or call her at (212) 650-5740.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Back to the Core Programs page.

Our founder, Mario Salvadori, a world-renowned structural engineer, believed that the built environment held all the knowledge that a person needed to be an intelligent and active member of the community. What teachers need to make this knowledge available to their students are tools with which they can "unpack" the knowledge embedded in the built environment.

The Salvadori Center gives these tools to teachers and students through a pedagogy grounded in what it calls "project-based, hands-on/minds-on activities" that employ the principles of architecture, engineering, and the design process. Through this method, teachers and their students can unlock the math, science, art, and humanities embodied in the structures and systems that surround them.

The LEAD Program

Programs

Topic

Full-Day or Half-Day

Days Of The Week [subject to availability]