Juxtaposition of architecture and mathematics for elementary school students

This paper discusses the Archimath programme, which was designed to develop awareness of the built environment in elementary school students, and to initiate an effort to improve it. Acknowledging the relationship between education and awareness of the environment, the programme was constructed for use with elementary school students selected from fourth to eighth grades, as an integrated mathematics and architecture programme. It includes topics from an introductory course for architecture majors and from the elementary mathematics curriculum. The programme was implemented in several pilot schools in Istanbul and was evaluated in accordance with activity sheets, pre- and post-perception tests, and the views and comments of the teachers who carried out the programme. It was revised and reorganized in accordance with this feedback and then implemented again on different groups of students in the selected schools. This paper discusses how the programme was conceived and developed.