Special Note on Ginny Graves 2015-2025

Since 1983, Ginny Graves, HAIA devoted her efforts to community-based education through the founding of CUBE with her husband, Dean W. Graves, FAIA. It is with a sad note to report that Ginny passed away 4 June 2025. She enjoyed a full life with family, friends and her work with building future generations of people working to improve their built environment. All of Ginny’s CUBEEs will continue to think of her often and the positive impact she had on all our lives.

Kirk Gastinger, Director

How to resource Boxes and a little guidance / updated 11 July 2024

One cannot imagine how creative people can be with just a simple box to decorate. Especially young students. Boxes can be used to create neighborhoods, monuments, memories. It is really quite a fun exercise in itself, but to also see how these 'buildings' relate to each other in an imaginary city, is also revealing. Students have pretty specific ideas about what and how they are doing with their projects. 

With just some gentle guidance from the Box City curriculum, the richness of Cube's program can be extended into many other areas of planning, design, architecture, engineering and policy making. 

Boxes for projects can be sourced in many ways. Just a few ideas include recycling containers from the kitchen, such as cereal, rice & crackers. Shipping and clothing boxes are good as well, but the scale needs to be considered in relation to the 'city' one is assembling. Cardboard tubing is especially popular. Other paperboard containers work well. A good resource for boxes includes local groceries and big box stores where empty boxes are offered for an ‘environmentally sensitive’ price of free.

---

Another popular option is custom corrugated cardboard boxes that, when folded, are in the shape of a gabled roof building or a cube. They are white on the outside for easy decorating, with paints, markers, glue &. One resource for these is from a box manufacturer who has an inventory of boxes available. They can be contacted via email at keith.dhcontainer@gmail.com  Their Box City Kit is 40 Boxes made up of eight 6" cubes, ten 5" cubes, ten 4" gabled roof shape boxes and twelve 4" cubes. Their Festival Pack is 1000 Boxes made up of 500  4" cubes, 400 4” gabled roof shaped boxes, fifty 5" cubes and fifty 6" cubes. NOTE that CUBE does not sell or market boxes.

CUBE Review

Cube has connected planners, educators, designers and policy makers all over the world

We are proud to have shared Box City and Walk Around the Block curricula more than 200 times with people and organizations in more than 30 countries this year. Communities are benefitting from the new awareness of how we learn that the built environment is ours. And, that we can influence the quality and livability of our neighborhoods.

You have helped spread the word this year. We can only say, Thanks! The valuable curricula that we have shared has been at no cost to the school, agency or institution or individuals.
Our work for next year is to develop updated curricula for Box City and Walk Around the Block. We are also planning on connecting you with others through our blog and tips and tricks on how to better deliver the curricula. 

Kirk Gastinger, Director
Laura Gosa, Board Chair
Ginny Graves, Founder

While our work continues, Cube could benefit if you or your organization would provide some support with your valuable resources. Please consider contributing at the end of 2019, or plan an early 2020 donation.

Box City at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Visit the Support Cube page at https://cube-education.org to make a donation online.
If you want Amazon to donate to Center For Understanding The Built Environment, start each shopping session at smile.amazon.com, and Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of your eligible purchases to Cube. Thanks! or donate thru Network for Good

How did we get here ?

Cube / A Synopsis                                       

The Center for Understanding the Built Environment provides educational resources to teach children and adults about the value of engaged citizenry. The built environment [everything that is not nature] influences, affects, inspires, controls, allows us, in our every activity to be a participant or a subject.

What is our built environment?

Our built environment starts with the home. It expands in ever widening circles to neighborhood, school, church, shops, services, farm, office, factory, civic and government institutions. All of these kinds of buildings are arranged in patterns of development. They are overlaid road systems, utilities, parking, open space and waterways.

Cities function in many different ways due to decisions that have taken place for hundreds of years. This affects our everyday psyche. Neighborhoods planned with beauty, proportion, scale, appreciation for nature and efficiency are better places to live, work and play.

How did we get here?

Our typical educational system [K-12] does not prepare us to think about how the built environment is created or how we should/could function in it.

We think architects just draw a building on paper and a contractor builds it. The long history of architecture is glossed over. What is architecture? What is design? What is structure? What emotions, functions and activities do buildings provide?

How did our neighborhood, town, city get designed and built? How does it function? The role of planners, politicians, bankers and citizens makes for a rich mixture of creativity and possibility. Engaged citizens wield a large influence on our communities.

How Cube works

CUBE provides tools for learning the fundamental concepts of how our built world has been designed. Active involvement from design to politics can make a difference in the outcomes.

Some of the Cube tools:

Walk Around the Block teaches students how to see and experience their local neighborhood with new eyes. Design, patterns, color, integration with nature, history help us ‘read’ and understand the built environment. Box City engages teachers and students in the act of design and the formation of our towns by decorating box shapes and placing them in strategic locations on a room sized ‘map’ of a neighborhood. Teamwork and negotiation is required as the various buildings in a group setting are placed on the ‘map’. There are many individual activities and curricula designed and developed by CUBE that are available for teachers, planners and community activists.

Cube history

The Center was invented in 1983 by Ginny Graves, HAIA. As a teacher, she saw the need for a more holistic pedagogy. The built environment provides the platform to reading, writing, math, science, art and technology. Ginny and her architect husband, Dean Graves, FAIA, and her unbelievable cadre of volunteer teachers developed CUBE to teach other teachers to teach students these fundamental concepts. Box City, Walk Around the Block, Picture This! and other curricula have found their way into city offices, schools and community centers all over the world – reaching an estimated 1,500,000 students over the years. Cube is a 501c3 organization.

Kirk Gastinger, FAIA Director

contact: kirkgastinger@gmail.com

What we know about you

Don't worry. All of this information came directly from our recent survey [mid 2017] here is what we learned from you:

• 1/2 learned about Cube from a friend or colleague via word of mouth
• 1/4 learned about Cube from the Internet
• 1/3 of Box City users are teachers
• 1/3 of Box City users are designers, architects or planners
• 1/2 of funding for Box City is private
• 1/2 have used Box City in past 5 years
• Class sizes are equally split amongst 1-25, 26-50 and larger
• Box City is usually several weeks [36%], but it has varied from 1 day to a week in length
• 3/4 of attendees were 9-14 years old
• 1/2 of attendees were 5-8 years old
• Cube 'boxes' were used in 40% of events
• more than 50% of respondents feel the curriculum is very useful
• 40% would like to see a curriculum upgrade
• 70% would like online support
• 57% would like access to boxes

And! Since launching our new website [cube-education.org] the first of February, 2018, we have jumped from sharing resources of 2/week previously, to more than 10/week! And, we have been sharing all over the world, from right here in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. 

If you would like to share your experiences with stories or pictures, we would love that! And, we love feedback on the resources that are most valuable to you. Let us know how we can help!