Urban designers

Osmani, from Little Havana Institute, is great at making connections within an ensemble of buildings. He's got a pretty bold sense of color!

Look out - it's the next generation

Asia, who is 9, popped in to our Brick x Brick workshops, and she latched on right away.

The girls get into patterns

Patterns generated digitally can be used for many design purposes. Understanding repeats get us all to think in terms of mathematics, too!

Cinematic design

Deon, from the Downtown YWCA program, got really into creating a scene from a disaster movie.

Inspiring the groups

The impetus for the work done in Brick by Brick comes directly from the work of artists who know how to translate what they do to young people in after-school settings. Michelle Weinberg, Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez, Dimitry Chamy and Patricio Cuello work in art, design and architecture fields. Their own practices were the model for Brick by Brick activities.

Michelle invented an environment using the same "playful physics" that characterizes her paintings.

Experimental Designs

By experimenting in Sketchup, we can imagine a whole new look for an urban plaza. This design was made by Alex at Little Havana Institute.

Girl Power gets design fever

The girls at Girl Power in Liberty City harnessed the lightning fast connection between millions of images they surf on the internet, photos of themselves and the 3D drafting platform provided free by Sketchup. Buildings that they designed and customized with their photos eventually landed up on their myspace pages! Technology and design meet social networking.

by Cornelius at Coconut Grove Cares

Using cosmic painter, we can make moving images.

Working with SketchUp

After playing around with SketchUp, I made this 3D image and exported it as a 2D image. After using SketchUp for the second time, I will download it on to my laptop.

Posted by: Lissette C.

Moving images show all the views of a building

In this case, a project by Dariel at Little Havana Institute, the Umbrella Corporation.

Kenny's animated movie made in sketchup

Some basic forms have been enhanced with color. Kenny is a student at Little Havana Institute.

patterns make good textures for building surfaces

Lissette made these patterns.

Two views of a personalized space

Lissette from the Downtown YWCA is an experienced computer user. This structure is off to a great start.

Working in Coconut Grove

Jamal and Sherianne

Starting to edit our urban design movie clips

We're learning the new version of iMovie. Our animated clips from Sketchup of our original designs for buildings and interiors are lined up and ready to go. Transitions, effects, titles and sound are next.

Developing new textures and patterns

Sherianne and Shari at The Barnyard in Coconut Grove are using Cosmic Painter, a free download for Mac OSX to develop new textures and patterns. They are both working on a moving image project.

Not your ordinary office

Kenny, from Little Havana Institute, is in the process of designing two new office spaces.

Kenny's wall treatments were invented using images from his favorite internet browsing sites.

Keishla's urban design

Keishla created this design using Sketchup at the Little Havana Institute.

nike the ones

i got the pic from a shoe web site and then i put them on the buliding then i changed the pic and it become a wired pic it looks funyy - Osmani, Little Havana Institute

jakia lee

MZ kialiciolus

Netanya Terry

Mz.Piglet

Rasheeda king

rasheeda King 4life

Bree's scanner photo

El Nuevo Herald visited with BxB at Girl Power in Liberty City

The girls in the group got a chance to show their stuff to Miami Herald writer Sarah Moreno (that's her in the purple jacket). Artists Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez and Michelle Weinberg facilitated the creation of digitally altered self-portraits and design in three dimensions using Sketchup software. Read Sarah's article about her visit with Girl Power here.

Miami Herald talks to BxB students at the Miami Art Musem

On our field trip to the Miami Art Museum, Claudia Boyd-Barrett from The Miami Herald chatted with a lot of our group to find out exactly what brick by Brick is.

Read the article (and check out the slide show of photos!) here.

Different views of a newly designed interior

The girls adapt their scanner portraits in Photoshop

Using a flatbed scanner to transfer their image to the computer, girls at Girl Power then got into the power of digital imaging, using Photoshop software.

The BxB building facade project

Imagine a city that reflects its residents' faces back at them. That's what we're up to in Brick x Brick workshops. 3D drafting is a creative virtual workspace where we can invent all kinds of buildings.

By Marqus from the downtown YWCA

Girl Power x 2

Girls in Liberty City experimented with self-portraits using our new MacBook Pro's Photo Booth program. Their faces will be incorporated into building facades using Google Sketchup.