Students to Design Far-Out Lodging : Ventura

Some kids’ ideas are totally out in space.

And that is just where they belong if the youngsters attend one of 10 elementary school classes for gifted children in the Ventura Unified School District. As part of an architecture unit, the students are competing in teams to design the best living quarters for a space station.

The project was created by Margaret Gosfield, district Gifted and Talented Education specialist, and John Spencer of Los Angeles, one of about a dozen space architects nationwide.

‘I’m interested in bringing space to Earth and making it more available, especially to children,” Spencer said. “I want to excite kids about the future. This is one of the first times kids this young are involved with such a program.”

The students were challenged to design a comfortable living space where eight scientists could live for three months. Sleeping compartments, two bathrooms, a kitchen, eating nook, recreation center, medical area and exercise space all had to be included.

“This is a bathtub with a zipper so water can’t get out,” said Erin Anderson, a third-grader at Loma Vista School, explaining a Styrofoam box with a cover.

Lorraine Gallegos, a third-grader at Will Rogers School, had recycled a L’Eggs hosiery egg into a sleeping unit; others were using cardboard rolls from toilet paper for that purpose.

Michael SooHoo, a Loma Vista fourth-grader, described how his shower works. “The water comes down and washes you and gets vacuumed down,” he said, adding that the water will be filtered and reused.

The children were carefully fitting these elements into five-gallon water jugs that had been sawed in half lengthwise.

The designs showed that the youngsters understood their lessons about weightlessness and why astronauts don’t need chairs or beds with mattresses and sheets in space, teacher Joanne Kaplan said. “It’s been very challenging, because these concepts are hard to touch,” she said. “We just do a lot of pretending.”

She and other GATE teachers were assisted by members of the Ventura County chapter of the American Institute of Architecture. “It was a challenge for us . . . to take our architectural language and put it into a form children can understand,” said Al Okuma, an Oxnard architect.

How successful the children, their teachers and advisers have been will be evaluated Wednesday by Spencer and his partner, Carlos Rocha. The winning team will receive a trophy that includes a piece from an actual space lab.