Fiona Livingston (9) and Evelyn Hale (10)

Summer campers Fiona Livingston (9) and Evelyn Hale (10) were kind enough to give us a short recap of their week-long adventure exploring art and environment with instructor Pamela Dhramsey Lee. Thank you, Fiona and Evelyn, and we’re so happy to hear about all the fun you had at camp this summer!

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In camp, we’ve been working on different types of sustainable buildings. First we made drawings, second made paper models, then we made our buildings. We had to think about what to do with grey water and what we could do with solar power. We thought about how to reuse our materials both within our design and within our houses.

Sustainable = Economy + Environment + Culture, meaning our houses had to be affordable to build and to maintain. They have to respond to their environment and to support the culture of the people who live in them, such as courtyards for communal living.

We looked at buildings of architects Zaha Hadid, Shigeru Ban and Abeer Seikaly. Matthew Coates designed the building of Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. Matthew gave us a tour and we learned how to make a sustainable building look inviting. How to hide doors, play with light, and control sound – plus much more!

We learned that buildings need to survive earthquakes and protect the environment that supports them. We also took a tour of Matthew’s architecture studio Coates Design. There we learned many things you can do with houses!

We looked at photos in Earth from Above by Yann Arthus-Bertrand which showed us environmental problems and environmentally based structures. The movement of dance can inspire architecture, so we studied some choreographic forms of Doris Humphrey. Lastly, we had an exhibition of our work. A lot of successes in one week here at BIMA summer camp!

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Learn more about BIMA 2021 lineup of summer camps here!