|
|
The Beginning: How did ordinary cardboard boxes become cardboard architecture?
Designing cardboard houses all started when I was a middle school, Journey to Careers teacher in Lafayette, Louisiana. While teaching a lesson in the Architecture and Construction Career Cluster, I had my students to design a floor plan of several different architectural house designs. From the chosen floor plans, each student was tasked to build partial miniatures of the houses complete with exterior and interior walls, and openings for doors and windows, using single wall, corrugated cardboard boxes.
After seeing their completed projects, I knew that I would someday use cardboard to construct a scaled miniature house complete with floor to ceiling walls, working doors and windows, and yes, even a roof... Teaching architecture and construction definitely ignited a love for corrugated cardboard that I never knew could exist.
My first house, The Magnolia House (2017), was built two years after teaching that lesson. I marveled that I could actually cut out brick patterns in cardboard. The second house, The Sunflower Shotgun House (2017), was imagined and created as a result of living in Louisiana and learning of their architectural history in southern culture. The third house, The Sweetheart Candy Cottage (2018), took me to a level of cardboard construction that was even more challenging. It contains hundreds of hand cut, hand-painted hearts that cover the roof with messages of love, hope, and friendship. The fourth house, The House of Emma Louise (2018), is nothing short of magnificent in its realistic details and construction. And guess what, I have only just begun to imagine, create, and build fanciful architecture using cardboard.
Update: Since the building of The House of Emma Louise, I have created six more pieces of cardboard architecture that have proven to be bigger, bolder, and more challenging than the ones before it.
Designing cardboard houses all started when I was a middle school, Journey to Careers teacher in Lafayette, Louisiana. While teaching a lesson in the Architecture and Construction Career Cluster, I had my students to design a floor plan of several different architectural house designs. From the chosen floor plans, each student was tasked to build partial miniatures of the houses complete with exterior and interior walls, and openings for doors and windows, using single wall, corrugated cardboard boxes.
After seeing their completed projects, I knew that I would someday use cardboard to construct a scaled miniature house complete with floor to ceiling walls, working doors and windows, and yes, even a roof... Teaching architecture and construction definitely ignited a love for corrugated cardboard that I never knew could exist.
My first house, The Magnolia House (2017), was built two years after teaching that lesson. I marveled that I could actually cut out brick patterns in cardboard. The second house, The Sunflower Shotgun House (2017), was imagined and created as a result of living in Louisiana and learning of their architectural history in southern culture. The third house, The Sweetheart Candy Cottage (2018), took me to a level of cardboard construction that was even more challenging. It contains hundreds of hand cut, hand-painted hearts that cover the roof with messages of love, hope, and friendship. The fourth house, The House of Emma Louise (2018), is nothing short of magnificent in its realistic details and construction. And guess what, I have only just begun to imagine, create, and build fanciful architecture using cardboard.
Update: Since the building of The House of Emma Louise, I have created six more pieces of cardboard architecture that have proven to be bigger, bolder, and more challenging than the ones before it.
- The Guiding Light Lighthouse
- The Seashell House of Whimsy
- The Lighthouse Keeper's Cottage
- The House of Mouse
- The Hello Kitty and Friends House
- The Chapel of Love and Matrimony
- The Commissioned Replica of the 1918 Detroit Fire House
- The Cardboard Replica of the Odenton Regional Library