ARC Mission & Vision
ARC’s mission is to improve critical, creative, and problem-solving skills in K-12 students by teaching them how to apply principles of architecture, urban design, engineering, industrial design and graphic design to their own world.
Brief History
The Architecture Resource Center was founded in 1991 as the education component of the non-profit Connecticut Architecture Foundation. Because of our rapid growth, successful programs, and vision for expansion of services, the ARC was incorporated as a separate non-profit organization in March 2005.
ARC's programs are organized into three categories:
K-12 Programs
Master Teaching Artists/Designers conduct 90-minute classroom workshops daily over 5-10 days.
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Community/Festival Programs
ARC collaborates with cultural and social-service agencies to create participatory family events.
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Outreach
ARC leadership participates in state, national, and international conferences and organizations focused on advancing the field of Design Education.
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How we do it
ARC programs show students how to use what they're learning in the real world.
ARC creates participatory and hands-on programs that:
Reinforce students’ learning through applied science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
Stimulate and foster critical, creative and problem-solving skills for students and teachers
Establish partnerships among families, schools, communities, and businesses
Encourage meaningful design programs as part of basic education that include the principles of architecture; urban design; engineering, industrial design, and graphic design
Teaching Artist Residencies
Typically one to 10 days, the programs are designed to reinforce grade-level curriculum standards. The ARC can often direct you to funding sources for these programs. |CONTACT US|
Design Connections Partnership (DCP)
Currently in its sixth year, DCP is underway in ten New Haven public schools in grades 1-5. This multi-year, multi-grade project is part of the mathematics curriculum.
Each year, the program serves 25 classroom teachers and their 600 students, 10 math coaches, and 10 art teachers.
The DCP goal is to use architecture and design as a problem-solving tool to integrate math and science learning with sequential and comprehensive art and design-based learning in order to:
- create standards-based Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) lessons
- introduce STEM-related careers
- develop 21st Century skills – collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking
- encourage students to apply academic concepts in authentic tasks
- foster students' sense of community and civic involvement
Current Programs
New Haven's Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places (NHCL)
Published by the ARC in 2001, and reprinted in 2010, NHCL was created for New Haven's fifth grades to help address performance standards in social studies and the visual arts.
Teaching students about their communities by using the urban landscape anchors the learning experience by connecting it the visible, tangible context of students' everyday lives. Students are introduced tot he inherent complexity of the world around them while learning basic lessons about the environment, social groups, ethnic groups, history, art, architecture, mathematics, geology, technology, industry, economics, planning, politics, government, and more.
The NHCL publications include a Teacher Edition, and oversized Student Workbook that includes line drawings of the 25 buildings that illustrate New Haven's history.
Beyond Amistad: African-American Struggle for Citizenship, 1770-1850
During the summer of 2007, eighty school teachers participated in two, one-week workshops to study the history of New England slavery using Connecticut's historic sites, people, and resources to illuminate slavery and freedom.
Viewing the celebrated Amistad incident of 1839-41as a catalyst and turning point, this institute explored architectural sites in Connecticut that underscore the centrality of the pre-twentieth-century African American struggle for equal rights to the larger American narrative.
The workshops were developed in partnership with the Yale University Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, and funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities "We the People" initiative.
The Hartford Connection was developed over 4 years as a collaboration of historians, scholars, teachers, and architects. The result is a textbook manuscript that places architecture and landscape in a comprehensive social and historical context.
In addition to exploring features of the built environment as architecture, HC uses these buildings to illustrate the region's growth over four centuries from a frontier village to a complex, interdependent, urban region.
It is structured chronologically to supplement the CT middle school history curriculum. Presented with generous illustration, carefully selected primary sources, context-minded and age-appropriate prose, and tested, hands-on design activities, HC offers CT students a view of Hartford as a city and metropolitan region as it functions locally and as it relates to the state, the nation, and the world.
Funded in large part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, HC is a partnership with Trinity College, the CT State Library, the Old State House, and the Capitol Region Education Council.
The Hartford Connection (HC)
Design Connections (DC)
The foundational programs created by the ARC include units of study involving projects and activities centered in the students' neighborhoods and community through an examination of local architecture, design, and urban planning.
The Design Connection Partnership, currently underway in New Haven Public Schools, grew out of the diverse programs grouped under the Design Connections general category.
DC programs can last a day, a week, or five years. The objectives and parameters are uniquely defined for every school or festival. |CONTACT|
Since 1991
Raised more than $2,000,000 in grant awards from private, local, state, and national sources.
Implemented more than 2,000 workshops throughout the Northeast attended by 65,000 K-12 students, teachers, and families
Developed Design Connections Partnership Program for New Haven Public Schools grades 1-5 – each program is designed to reinforce grade-specific curriculum subject matter
Provided year-long, in-class programs for three major Connecticut cities – Hartford, New Haven, and Waterbury
Presented national professional development institutes for K-8 teachers in partnership with Yale University
Published New Haven's Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places, currently used in 75 New Haven fifth-grade classrooms
Developed Hartford Connection, a publication for CT middle school students and teachers that illustrates the history of Connecticut through the changes in its built environment
ARC leadership has become a thought-leader in all things related to Design Education and is sought after to participate on national and international boards, panels, and to present at multiple conferences