AlphaBEST is proud to celebrate its three-year partnership with Arckit, a collaboration that has brought a new dimension of creativity and precision to our after-school enrichment. Founded by Irish architect Damien Murtagh in 2014, Arckit was born from a desire to move beyond archaic modeling methods and create a modular, flat-packed building system that functions as both a toy and a professional tool.
Read on to discover how Damien married his innovative product with AlphaBEST’s best-in-class curriculum to inspire new worlds of wonder in students.
At its core, Arckit democratizes design by allowing students to build precision models spontaneously, regardless of skills. While the system is accessible to children as young as five, its open-ended design allows students to iterate and test hypotheses, leading to deeper connections. This hands-on, project-based approach helps build confidence in students who excel through tactile learning rather than traditional academic methods, and after school is the perfect time for this type of exploration.
The partnership between Arckit and AlphaBEST has allowed for the creation of structured, multi-year curriculum themes, such as the study of famous buildings and cities. For example, a lesson focused on simple lines and minimalism, so elegantly demonstrated by Mies Van Der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, uses Arckit to recreate this timeless structure in miniature. This versatility ensures that students remain engaged with the kits year after year as they explore different facets of the built environment.
At AlphaBEST, after-school activities don’t happen in a silo. Instead, different curriculum partners intersect to create engaging and fun experiences for diverse groups of students. Current collaborations with SAMLabs have already resulted in lesson plans that combine Arckit architectural modeling with SAMLabs’ coding and sustainability. Murtagh envisions the platform expanding even further, with potential future themes exploring extreme habitats and structures inspired by nature. By continuously innovating, Arckit and AlphaBEST are ensuring that the next generation of designers and thinkers have the tools they need to build the future.
Want to learn more about our approach to curated curriculum? Contact us today to get started.
