Julia J., hammerhead shark (interior structure), grade eleven.

Jude Saleet

The first challenge 3D teachers face with their students is getting them to shift from thinking in two dimensions to thinking in three dimensions. This can be accomplished by first working with the ubiquitous paper cube—it starts out flat, and after a few cuts and folds, weʼve traversed two-dimensional space to the third dimension.

Iʼve been starting with folded paper forms in my design classes for some time, but this is the first year I considered moving the ball further downfield. What would an advanced form look like? How could I get my students to create more advanced 3D forms with paper? This project is my attempt to answer these questions.

Let the Process Begin
We settled quickly on organic, anatomical structures. The curriculum up to this point, which focused on geometrical and abstract forms, helped lead us to that conclusion. Students broke into teams of their own choosing, so we started by breaking the first rule of partner projects in high school—don’t pick your friends. Much to my studentsʼ credit, they made it work anyway.

There was enough of a mix of both art and design to create opportunities for students to be creative, problem-solve, and ultimately feel a high level of accomplishment.

Next, the research got underway. I encouraged students to choose a form with an exterior that could be easily reproduced—like bugs. The segmented exoskeletons on arthropods (animals with a hard covering, a body made of joined segments, and no internal spine) were almost calling to be cut and carved out of paper. But my students set their goals a little higher. While some of them chose insects for their projects, others focused on different members of the animal kingdom, both extinct and alive.

Interior and Exterior Design
Now the project took a much-needed tangent. We stopped to talk about designing an infrastructure, the interior framework upon which the outer form will be built. To discuss this, I found it useful to move away from the animal kingdom and show students schematics of ships and airplanes—how the interior framework mimicks the outer curves while holding the form together. How it was the infrastructure that gave the boat its form.

Justin W., arachnid, grade nine.

Once they had made this connection and students understood the relationship between the interior and exterior design, they got to work building their chosen animal forms as if they were building ships so that the inner frames of the forms mimicked the interior structure. Once students created the inner framework, all they needed to do was to follow the framework and fill in the gaps with cut paper and hot glue.

Reflection
These paper volumes fulfilled a need for me and my students as we continued to explore and develop a strong design curriculum. There was enough of a mix of both art and design, as well as engineering, to create opportunities for students to be creative, run into dead ends, fail happily, problem-solve, and ultimately feel a high level of accomplishment.

Jude Saleet has been an educator for over twenty years. He teaches design, photography, sculpture, digital, and AP-level courses. jsaleet@hotmail.com
The 3D Mindset