Creative Sparks at the Royal Institution

This July, the historic Royal Institution became a laboratory for imagination with two days of Architecture Kids workshops. Across four buzzing sessions, children and teens explored plant-friendly design and the visionary geometry of Buckminster Fuller.

What's it like designing for a client that can't talk or communicate their requirements? That's the starting point in 'Designing for Plants'.

The younger groups took on the challenge of designing homes for plants. They imagined life as a sunflower, thought about sunlight, water, and shelter, and then set to work sketching and building with paper, straws, and string. The results were ingenious plant shelters with rain-catching roofs, protective walls, and clever greenhouse windows.

Older students stepped into the world of Bucky Fuller, experimenting with triangles, geodesic domes, and tensegrity structures. With art straws, connectors, origami, and marshmallows, they built geodesic domes, tested speculative habitats, and pitched designs that could one day inspire real-world solutions for disaster relief or extreme environment living.

Across all sessions, students moved between talking, drawing, and making - engaging visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic learning styles. This mix gave every young designer a way in, whether they preferred sketching bold ideas, testing models with their hands, or exploring through discussion. The workshops blended science, art, and engineering into tangible, creative experiences that built confidence as much as structures.

Creative Design Workshop at the Royal Institution, inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller.

A Big Thank You!

We are hugely grateful to the Royal Institution for inviting us to share these workshops in such an inspiring setting. The history in those walls met the future in the hands of these young designers - and it was an absolute pleasure to be part of.

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Read more about these exciting creative workshops on our Substack site here:

Creative Sparks at the Royal Institution

Want to Bring This to Your School?

If you’d like to spark curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving in your students through hands-on architectural design, we’d love to talk. Get in touch and let’s see what we can build together.

Want to unlock your child’s inner genius? Contact Architecture Kids at genius@architecturekids.co.uk