Nine-year-old Point Loma student Laura McKinstry is getting an early start with a career in architecture.
Her work, The Seasons House, is displayed at John Baker’s Frames on Point Loma Avenue, and she’s received local recognition for her work.
McKinstry got her start, along with numerous other youngsters, at Sunset View Model Magnet Elementary School through a program called the Built Environment Education Program, or B.E.E.P.
The program is a collaboration of the San Diego Unified School District, the American Institute of Architects and the American Society of Landscape Architects to raise awareness among elementary level students about architecture and urban design.
It involves teachers and design professionals working together in the classroom to teach students about the built environment and the architect’s role in it. McKinstry participated in the Fantasy House Design project guided by Rebecca Grijalva, a designer at Platt/Whitelaw Architects.
After a visit to the home of James and Anne Hubbell, who live and work in a house/studio built above the hills of Santa Ysabel, the students set out to design their own dream homes.
The Hubbell house is mixture of star-gazing roofs, colorful stained glass, carved doors, a “stairway to heaven” sleeping loft, hidden fountains and mosaic floors.
Some of the students’ ideas included a glass room that spins around slowly, lifts up and flies you anywhere you need to go, a bowling alley in the living room and an ice cream castle in the back yard with pizza growing on bushes.
McKinstry designed a house for all seasons, with each of the four main rooms oriented to capture the best of the season the room is named after. The summer room faces north to be cool, the winter room faces south for sun, the spring and fall rooms face east and west.
“These students’ fantasy house projects are important not only because of the imagination and creativity possible if you have fun with your brain, but because it has taught the children that anything is possible, sometimes,” Grijalva said. “It also teaches the students the limitless possibilities of using recycled materials.”
