3D DESIGN
Aims The subject aims to foster creativity, increase practical skills and improve investigation, communication and research abilities whilst working with the latest technology. Threedimensional design is a way of seeing things and making sense of the designed and built world around us. Three-dimensional design is defined here as the design, prototyping and modelling or making of primarily functional and aesthetic products, objects, and environments, drawing upon intellectual, creative and practical skills.
Skills Students will design, prototype and model or make; products, objects, and environments, using intellectual, creative and practical skills. Students will generate, develop, refine, and record ideas. They will follow their own creative pathway reinventing existing products or inventing new ones. They will improve their creative skills through a predominantly practical course involving materials, techniques, media processes, and technologies.
Content Discover the way sources inspire the development of ideas relevant to three-dimensional design including how sources relate to historical, contemporary, cultural, social, environmental and creative contexts. Students explore how ideas, feelings, forms, and purposes generate responses that address specific needs, be they personal or determined by external factors such as the requirements of an individual client’ s expectations, needs of an intended audience or details of a specific commission.
Areas of study could include architectural design, product design, jewellery and body adornment, interior design, environmental / landscape / garden design, exhibition design, 3D digital design, designs for theatre, film and television, stop frame animation, model making, workshop making, 3D printing, laser cutting, computer aided design, the Adobe suite, graphic communication, experimenting with materials and robotic sculpture.
Enrichment The department is a hub of independent creative and practical exploration through extended access to the makerspace with technical support. This encourages the development of ideas using the rapid prototyping capabilities of the laser cutter and the bank of 3D printers. Clubs like First Tech Robotics, Coding and Adobe, allow further exploration and realisation of ideas. Talks are delivered through the training partnership and our well-established links with Loughborough University’ s design engineering department. Trips to the Design Museum and London Gallery visits help to stimulate a wider understanding of the influences on the subject.
THE MIDDLE SCHOOL | AT SEVENOAKS 57