Our Year 11 STEAM students recently held their ‘Re-Imagined Spaces Expo’ in the school’s Event Centre Foyer. It was a vibrant showcase of innovation, design thinking, and community awareness. The exhibition marked the culmination of the students’ project, which had spanned multiple terms, in which pairs worked to reimagine a real-world site on Auckland’s North Shore into a space that better serves the local community.
Each student pair collaborated across two key design roles. One student took the lead on landscape planning – carefully considering the layout of paths, plantings, and hard and soft landscaping features. Their partner designed a creative sculptural structure for the site. These structures ranged from interactive sculptures and fountains to playgrounds and community art installations, all tailored to the needs and character of the local area, as identified through a community-wide survey of residents.
We invited parents, teachers, students, and special guests to the event, which featured concept models, landscape diagrams, design booklets, and strategic plans addressing sustainability, accessibility, and cultural responsiveness. Among the attendees were North Shore Councillor Richard Hills and Drina Paratene of Ngāti Pāoa, both of whom had previously supported the project as guest speakers. Their return visit allowed them to see how students had developed their ideas in response to the insights they had shared earlier in the year.
We encouraged visitors to interact with the projects and offer insights and feedback directly to the student designers. This feedback proved invaluable. Students used it to inform their final reflections and to evaluate the effectiveness of their outcomes, a vital part of their assessment submissions.
The Expo celebrated student achievement and highlighted the power of applied, cross-curricular learning in STEAM education. Through this project, students demonstrated how thoughtful design can make a meaningful difference in the community.
Main image: The STEAM banner created by Y10 student Lily Maurice, who used digital tools as inspiration and then drew the design on an online art programme