This makerspace session explores the arch as a fundamental architectural form through hands-on experimentation using cardboard only. The session introduces arches as both artistic expressions and structural systems, focusing on how geometry, repetition, and material behavior shape endurance, stability, and spatial possibilities.

Participants work in small groups to design and build different types of arches, vaults, and domes, investigating how forces travel through curved forms and how variations in proportion, thickness, and assembly affect performance. By working at model scale, participants engage directly with concepts such as compression, load transfer, modularity, and structural logic, without relying on digital tools or advanced machinery.

The session frames architecture as a STEAM practice, where science, engineering, mathematics, and art intersect through making. Cardboard is used as an accessible, low-tech material that allows rapid testing, failure, and iteration, emphasizing learning through physical engagement rather than calculation.
10 minutes – Conceptual presentation
45 minutes – Group design & building challenge
20 minutes – Group presentations
15 minutes – Reflection & discussion