We were asked by the learning team at the Victoria & Albert Museum to create an activity for kids (and their parents) that tied in with their ‘Tropical Modernism‘ exhibition, had a digital component and could be run throughout the summer of 2024.
The Tropical Modernism exhibition was about the architecture that emerged predominantly in West Africa and South Asia in the middle of the C20th, which sought to keep people cool in hot, humid conditions by restricting how much sunlight entered buildings whilst allowing plenty of airflow.
One of the most striking features of these buildings are the geometric patterns of holes in the walls, which combined with overhangs, allowed air to flow freely through the building whilst keeping occupants in the shade.
In order to demonstrate this principle we designed a kit of parts that could be used by visitors to quickly and easily build and customise their own mini-Tropical Modernist building.
To demonstrate how the buildings were working we created digitally enabled, BBC micro:bit-based, mini-occupants which could report on the temperature they were experiencing in the building, alongside some devices (an infra red lamp and some small, custom designed battery operated fans) to simulate the environmental conditions.
If you would like to run this activity yourself you can download the file to make the humanoid micro:bit holders from Thingiverse and the code from the micro:bit project.
