My Green City outreach workshops at Bristol Family Arts Festival

As part of the 2015 Bristol Family Arts Festival the Architecture Centre, Watershed and Children's Scrapstore  hosted two creative family outreach workshops at Junction 3 Library, Easton and Lawrence Weston Community Farm. Families were asked to help populate a green city full of eco-friendly buildings, green transport and sustainable energy solutions. Some great creations were made!

Learn more about projects around Bristol that are helping the city be more green at our City Ideas Studio

Visit our website for information on upcoming events

City Ideas Studio: Resources

We are a few weeks into our third City Ideas Studio residency, Resources, where we are addressing the question: How can we make more of the things we have? Visit the gallery 11-5 Wednesday-Friday and 12-5 Saturday-Sunday to explore all aspects of resourcefulness.

Seat made by Round Wood Design, based at Bower
Ashton Woodyard

The exhibition explores not only how best to use finite resources such as building
materials, land and money, but also how cities should harness the powerful resource
of human inventiveness and action.

There is a lot to find out about and explore:

• BuroHappold Engineering's range of global and local resourceful initiatives
• Our touch screen where you can learn about our previous exhibitions, projects and organisations that are exploring solutions for a sustainable future, we’re gradually adding all our City Ideas Studio content onto the touch screen so have a read up on our previous residencies.
• Watch videos and read up on local resourceful projects including: Bristol Green Doors, Bristol ReUse Network and Ecomotive SNUG Homes
• Take part in our SNUG Homes family activity - can you design a 'snug' home (a compact and environmentally friendly house)
• Add your comments and ideas to our map on resourceful projects in Bristol
• View UWE Department of Architecture and the Built Environment's installation, that offers a thought-provoking response to the exhibition theme
• Learn about Bower Ashton Woodyard and Round Wood Design and try out the wood furniture
• Visit our foyer to learn about the Architecture Centre's Shape My City #livebuild sustainable building project

Visit the Architecture Centre website for information on events and exhibitions coming soon.

Visit the City Ideas Studio resources exhibition after hours in our special twilight opening on 30 October, part of Art Weekender: Bristol & Bath

Bristol Green Doors: The Route to Retrofit

Add your comments to our map

City of Ideas touch screen

Early prototype design of a SNUG Home by Ecomotive

UWE Department of Architecture and the Built Environment display

Shape My City #livebuild foyer exhibition

Snug Homes: Family Activity

Visit our City Ideas Studio Resources residency to get involved in our family activity. Our gallery is open 11-5 Wednesday-Friday and 12-5 Saturday-Sunday.

 Your challenge is to design a 'snug' home, a compact, environmentally friendly house that is small in size but still has everything you need. Learn about Ecomotive SNUG homes in our exhibition, take inspiration from the sheets on our activity table and get designing.

A snug home is important because the UK needs more affordable homes (smaller houses are usually cheaper), space in the cities is limited and expensive (future homes need to take up less space), small homes generally have a smaller carbon footprint and due to climate change rising sea levels we may have less land to build houses on.

When designing and making think about:

• The layout inside - how can you squeeze everything you need into the space and what don't we need
• Whether your home could be stackable and fit together
• What environmentally friendly materials your snug home could be made from
• If your snug home generate its own electricity

Share your creations on our gallery wall and ask a member of staff to photograph your design and share via our Twitter: @archcentre #snughomes

Learn more about Ecomotive SNUG homes here and at our Resources residency.

As part of Bristol Family Arts Festival there's also a chance to join in at our Shoe boxes and shipping containers: make your own snug home workshop on Friday 30 October.

Visit the Architecture Centre's website for more events and information.

My Wild Pavilion: Family Activity

Our gallery is filling up with great nature-related models and drawings that visitors have created on our family activity table, visit our Nature residency to get involved with our Wild Pavilion fun.

Taking inspiration from the drawings and ideas on display by Andrew Grant and the A3 image montage sheets on our activity table, your challenge is to design your own nature inspired pavilion. Think about how your pavilion can include nature, how it can be 'wild', the size, shape and use of your pavilion. Create some design drawings of your pavilion or a model with the materials provided.

There's also an opportunity to enter our My Wild Pavilion competition here at the gallery by Sunday 13 September to be in with a chance of winning two fantastic green poetry books - Green Poems for a Blue Planet and Verse of the Earth, written by Martin Kiszko and illustrated by Aardman Animation's Nick Park. One copy is signed by the author and the illustrator. The competition is open to under 16s. Please give your entry to a member of staff and provide contact details to be entered into the competition.

You can also enter your pavilion design to the national Build Your Own Pavilion competition by uploading to: www.buildyourownpavilion.serpentinegalleries.org if you are aged 8-14.

Visit our Nature residency before the 13th September. We will be launching our third City Ideas Studio residency, Resources, on the 23rd of September.

Visit the Architecture Centre website for more information about us and upcoming exhibitions and events: www.architecturecentre.co.uk

My Wild City: Meet a wildlife expert

On Saturday 1 August we had our first 'Meet a wildlife expert' drop-in session, Avon Wildlife Trust expert Matt offered his expertise on how we can all support wildlife in our area. He offered top tips on how to make your own insect hotel and encourage wildlife to flourish. In our own insect hotel we spotted zebra spiders, aphids and some snail trails, Matt also helped us harvest some seeds and water the meadow. Visitors also got their hands dirty and made free seed bombs to take home!

Come to our next 'meet a wildlife expert' session on 5 September 1-4pm to find out more ways we can do something amazing for nature. More information here

For information about other Architecture Centre events, please visit:
http://architecturecentre.co.uk/events

Visit City Ideas Studio: Nature - 15 July to 13 September

Feeding the Future City family event

On Saturday 23 May the Architecture Centre held a fun and creative drop-in workshop where families were asked to ponder how cities of the future will feed themselves, as part of the Architecture Centre’s City Ideas Studio food season. Models of possible designs for a future city were built; demonstrating various ways cities of the future could feed themselves sustainably, using buildings and spaces to maximise the amount of food it grows. This is important because as the population of the world increases and more people in cities (some in Megacities of 10 million+ people), transport and space will be limited and expensive, we will need to grow more food and more in our cities to decrease transport costs.

Families were asked to think of ways we can utilise any public space to grow food locally, growing food on and in houses/flats, urban food farms and reducing food waste, transport and energy costs. The models were added to our future model city and there were many innovative and creative ideas including:

• Bananas grown from lampposts
• Vertical farming in the form of a ‘tower of carrots’
• Open top buses that will grow food on the roof
• A ferry that transports and grows plums, utilising water space

Families who took part were given edible seedlings to take home and grow into tasty beans. Children that were inspired by the drop-in workshop were encouraged to enter the Architecture Centre’s My Green City Design Challenge for schools. #mygreencity

You can download a copy of the Feeding the Future City Family Activity here and the Image Montage sheet here.

This event was part of the Architecture Centre’s My Green City 2015 Learning and Participation programme and took place during our City Ideas Studio food residency.