The beauty of Main Lesson
I recently had the privilege of accompanying the Year 11 and 12 students on the Architecture and Romanticism Main Lesson Camp to Sydney. I went feeling completely out of my depth. I am an economist, a geographer and a mathematician, and happier using numbers to add depth to sentences in preference to adjectives. Thus, my experience with the content being discussed and discovered by the students, and presented by my colleagues I thought was going to be completely foreign.
As I shared my nervous energy with colleagues, and any student willing to listen, many conversations about the how our human world has been built and developed, and what makes it beautiful, were held. Structure versus feeling, form and formula versus representation. I was stopped in my tracks when the staircase in the Dr Chau Chuk Wing Building in Sydney was described as, ‘if the staircase were the wind, this is what it would look like.’ And the description was perfect; however, this image would have never independently entered my mind. (My mind defaulted to production, composition of material, strength and forces. And how and who polishes the steel.)
We went on to study Sydney through many different lenses. For example:
- Through the eyes of the First Nations people and Sydney Cove, environmentally, being the most perfect place to live, and how it supported people for thousands of years.
- How socio-economic divides were created from the very first day of settlement after the arrival of the First Fleet.
- The changes in forms of buildings and structures, from stone to steel, force and tension, maths and the physics behind the structure of buildings
- The impact of environmental thought, design and planning in a modern Sydney, toward a sustainable future.
- Sydney is simply beautiful. The environment, the history, the topography, culture and the physics and maths.
Now that is a set of Main Lessons to help round off the learning of Semester 1, 2023! Learning through connections of concepts and skills, and learning which can be experienced and lived. Adding to the academic learning was a shared social experience and an emotional connection among the group. This is what makes the learning at Orana so special.
I learned about prominent people in Sydney and Australia’s history, about differences in the structure and changes of religious spaces, and changes in architecture and building movements. Yet this beautifully complemented my understanding of buildings and their mathematical and physical structure, and techniques of construction, position on sites and topography, and of course their place in our economy. And I my thoughts that our world is beautiful were truly confirmed.
The trip was concluded by George Hardwood – Edwards delivering his Class 12 Project presentation on the steps of the Opera House. Presenting it to our Class 11 and 12 students, and any other person walking by. A stunning backdrop and a fitting end to a learning journey.
Susan Pascoe
Acting Deputy Principal
