Team Architect Game

Team Architect is an amazing game for people to unleash their creativity and work together to achieve a common goal. This activity is often played for team building or icebreaker purposes, but is entertaining enough to be played in any scenario.

It’s best played with smaller groups, but there can be more than two groups playing at a time to increase the competition.

This game simply requires each team to build something with a small amount of random materials. These materials aren’t usually useful and it’s not always clear how they can be used, which is why players have to get creative.

For example, each team could be given Popsicle sticks and duct tape with the requirement to build a bridge that would hold a heavy book. Another example is giving each team string and newspaper, so they can make an egg support. The team’s creation must be able to support an egg when dropped from a specific height.

Decide on the materials to be used in the game. They can be preselected or the players can just make use out of what objects are in the room. For example, if you are playing this in an office, teams can use paper clips, tape, staplers, or any other objects found nearby.

Sort out your groups—you can either have two small to medium-sized groups or multiple—three or four—small groups. Assign a designated timer and the amount of time for the teams to craft their design.

Decide what each team will be building and what materials they can use. For example, you will be building a tower out of marshmallows and toothpicks.

Set the timer and let the teams begin! The first team who finishes or who has the better design that will be tested after the game can either determine the ending.

If testing the design, such as the egg drop example mentioned above, then the team who successfully protects the egg during the drop would win. If there’s a tie, you can have a sudden death round where teams must add onto their creation or build a completely new object in a shorter amount of time.

Moment of Reflection

• What was the most difficult part of the task?
• At some point did you think about not using all the materials?
• What process did your group use to make decisions? Were all ideas explored? What did you notice about your planning process?
• What strategies did they adopt and why? Knowing what you know now, would you do anything different next time?

The topics of this publication: creativity, teamwork, imagination, strategy, integration, interactions, collaboration, cooperation, adaptability skills, planning, adaptation