Barbican Box Primary School Workshops
Location: | Tower Hamlets / Lewisham, London |
Type: | Youth Workshop |
Client: | The Barbican |
Collaborators: | Marcus du Sautoy |
Duration: | 2020 |
Status: | Ongoing |
Photographs: | Betty Laura Zapata, Okra |
The project investigates the golden ratio and recurring patterns that repeat in nature, humans, the cosmos and architecture. The project seeks to inspire a new generation from mixed backgrounds to feel empowered in the fields of mathematics, design and architecture.
Initial workshops asked students to be inquisitive and analytical by walking in their local areas, discussing and drawing the city around them. The students then planned their ideal homes using golden rectangles, squares and spirals scaled to the Fibonacci sequence.
Students were then tasked with exploring how their own bodies related to the golden ratio, creating their own versions of the Vitruvian man at a 1:1 scale. In small groups the students made models of their ideal bedrooms to golden proportions and based on their ideas developed in previous workshops.
Since the Covid-19 outbreak, Okra and the Barbican have been exploring ways of how to complete the programme remotely.







