Here are some of our favorite resources for studying architecture in the classroom.

• Visit a historic building, such as the Mann House (Concord, MI), in your community. Use it as the living laboratory that it is. Sketch it. Make a model of it. Diagram it and label its features. Draw a floor plan of it. Photograph it and put up a display. Learn about the people who lived or worked there in the past. Interview people who live or work there now or who know about the building and its history; add their stories to your photos and illustrations for a book or display.
• Join CUBE (Center for Understanding the Built Environment) and receive archiSources, newsletters with ideas for teaching about the built environment and architectural heritage. CUBE also prints Technical Bulletins, with more programs, lessons and bibliographies. CUBE offers the "Walk Around the Block Curriculum" through which students discover their own community.
• Frank Lloyd Wright
  • Frank Lloyd Wright Building Guide - Michigan (Frank Lloyd Wright sites in Michigan and links to further information)
  • Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American Landscape, 1922-1932 (Library of Congress exhibit)
• Eero Saarinen
  • Eero Saarinen - Architect With a Vision by Michael A. Capps (National Park Service, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial)
• Adapt ideas from the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation's Architecture in the Classroom and Architecture for Young Children and Students web pages to your town.
• Sources for student activities and lesson plans:
  • Teaching with Historic Places uses sites on the National Register of Historic Places to teach history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects. Get ideas for teaching with your own town's historic buildings!
  • Architecture from THEN, The Heritage Education Network
• Borrow these books from your local library. Purchase those still in print for your school or classroom library.
  • Archabet: An Architectural Alphabet with photographs by Balthazar Korab. Washington, DC: The Preservation Press, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1985.
  • Architects Make Zigzags: Looking at Architecture from A to Z with drawings by Roxie Munro and text by Diane Maddex. Washington, DC: The Preservation Press, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1986.
  • Architecture in Michigan (revised ed.) by Wayne Andrews. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987.
  • The Buildings of Detroit: A History by W. Hawkins Ferry. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980.
  • Buildings of Michigan by Kathryn B. Eckert. NY: Oxford University Press, 1992.
  • Detroit Architecture: A.I.A. Guide (revised ed.) edited by Martin C. P. McElroy. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980.
  • The 50 Most Significant Structures in Michigan by the Michigan Society of Architects. Detroit: Michigan Society of Architects, 1980.
  • Fun with Architecture by David Eisen (a rubber stamp activity kit with architecture guidebook). NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Viking, 1992.
  • I Know That Building! Discovering Architecture with Activities and Games by Jane D'Alelio. Washington, DC: The Preservation Press, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1989.
  • Traveling Through Time: A Guide to Michigan's Historical Markers edited by Laura R. Ashlee. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2005.
  • What It Feels Like to Be a Building by Forrest Wilson. Washington, DC: The Preservation Press, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1985.
  • What Style Is It? A Guide to American Architecture (Building Watchers Series) by John C. Poppeliers; S. Allen Chambers, Jr.; and Nancy B. Schwartz. Washington, DC: The Preservation Press, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1983.

Updated 11/30/2005

Michigan Historical Center, Department of History, Arts and Libraries
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