Steve Rojas

Zack Knightley

Andrew Deckard

Steve Rees

Keira Magnussen

At the beginning of the semester, the high-school students in DeLaSalle’s Creative Studio class had no idea that their semester would culminate in the design and construction of a full-size mockup of an automobile. DeLaSalle, located at 3740 Forest Ave. in Kansas City, is a private, tuition-free alternative school.

 The class was taught by Steve Rees, an architect and longtime Kansas City automobile enthusiast, racer and collector. In early April, the class, composed of Zack Knighten, Reggie Phillips, Kiera Magnussen, Andrew Deckard and Steve Rojas, embraced a project to design a body that would theoretically fit on an Atom Ariel. The Ariel is a minimalist automobile from England that resembles an open-wheel racer without a full-coverage body.

 “We studied the application of creativity to business,” Rees said, “and what it means to get a degree, what it means to define what your goals are life. Business people, such as a motivational speaker and a person who owned rental properties, spoke to the class, and we did business models for them. We also studied the Dyson vacuum.”

 The class seemed to focus, Rees said, when they began studying automotive design. They poured over design books from Rees’ library and watched a video about the Atom Ariel. That was the spark that led the class to design a full-scale model of a body that would fit the Ariel.

 Using the dimensions of the Ariel, the students made scale drawings. They transferred their drawings into three-dimensional scale models that they carved from foam blocks. After the individual models were finished, the students took elements of each design and combined them into a full-scale model.

 It was difficult to find a medium that could be shaped easily. At first, Rees considered making the body out of foam, but problems caused the group to change their plans in midstream. The solution was to glue together sheets of polystyrene building insulation that was then cut into a rough shape. Final contours were honed with sandpaper. Real auto design studios make full-size models out of a special clay that is shaped by machines and by hand.

 Often fueled by the home-made pies of his mom, Lou Sinclair, Rees and his students spent a couple of full days on the project, whittling and sanding the white styrene into its final shape in Rees’ garage.

 Zack Knighten said that the process of turning his vision into a three-dimensional model taught him a lot. “I didn’t know how to do any of this at first, but Rees taught me how to refine the shape,” he said.

 “I learned that you can take a little idea and turn it into a really big one,” said Reggie Phillips. “I learned how to make two-dimensional drawings and then turn them into reality.”

 The students named their car the DLS, after their school, and the logo they created contains each student’s name. The result of their creative vision isn’t a real car, but the lessons they learned by making it should last a lifetime.

Marshall Miller, right, founded the event that raised money for the Art Institute scholarship fund.