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Rachel Carlisle, a fourth-grader at Salt Lake City's Escalante Elementary, had a problem. She built a five-story hotel on top of railroad tracks.
Fortunately, the model Heavenly Hotel was around a foot tall and made of paper so the solution was a cinch.
"I built a Heavenly Tunnel through it," Carlisle said.
She is one of 350 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders who designed and built a 99-block "box city" unveiled Monday in the Salt Lake City Main Library. The students constructed schools, houses, town halls, churches and businesses from cereal boxes, cardboard, tin foil, construction paper and other materials. They built around streams, hills, trees and an American Indian burial ground.
Eleven classrooms from Escalante, Jackson, Ridgecrest and William Penn elementary schools participated, connecting their blocks with roads, trails and train tracks. Some created new businesses. Others built their favorites, including Red Iguana restaurant and a "small" Target.
The project was led by 30 volunteers from the Utah chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Members of the group's Young Architects Forum developed the eight-week program in 2004.
Students learn more than design. The eight, one-hour lessons fit with Utah's core curriculum for math, language arts, social studies, science and visual arts. Even music is incorporated when students compose songs using beats and rhythms pulled from architectural patterns in their neighborhoods.
"We try to get them to think about the built environment around them and how it affects them," said Breanna Bonsavage, chairwoman of the Educating Elementary Children through Architecture program. "They learn a lot about scale. They learn a lot of creativity."
Pam Bunderson, a fourth-grade teacher at Ridgecrest Elementary in Cottonwood Heights, said her students also learned "life skills" of cooperation, team work and problem solving.
"This was a great experience," she said during a presentation for parents. "It became a huge cooperative learning effort."
McLaren Buchanan, a fourth-grader at Ridgecrest, said when his group began to run out of time, the team had to "work really hard together." Buchanan sacrificed the slide he had envisioned running from MexItalian Restaurant — it serves Mexican and Italian food — into an adjacent lake.
Buchanan compromised by turning one half of the building, which is shaped like Paris' Arc de Triomphe, into a scuba diving center. Customers can dive inside the building or in the lake.
"I liked getting to know my group and getting to see what they did in the project," he said.
Erik Rodriguez, a fourth-grader at Escalante Elementary, also expressed relief at finishing his city block on time.
"We realized that it's not that easy making a city," Rodriguez told parents. "We took two hours today — one before lunch and one after lunch. Our buildings are perfect."
See the box city
When • Now through Thursday
Where • Salt Lake City Main Library atrium, 210 E. 400 South