Thursday, March 25, 2010

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES DEANERY — Three Upper School students at Summit Country Day School, Megan Peaslee, Meggie O’Brien and Lauren Miller, recently won the “Most Successful Use of Green Design Solutions” design award sponsored by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for their project, “The Morlein Apartment Complex & Recreation Center.”

Summit Country Day School science teacher Eric Towers poses with Megan Peaslee, left, Lauren Miller and Meggie O’Brien. (Courtesy photo)

The premise of the project is that thousands of buildings in our region and throughout the country are vacant. The goal of this project is to also teach students adaptive reuse. Students selected a building in their community and gave new life to it by imagining a new use for it, then modified the building to reflect a real-life community opportunity. The students used Google Sketch-Up to construct the architecture for their model, discovered the green energy options available and calculated the number of points a building earns in terms of its impact on the environment.
 
The girls also won an honorable mention as promising future architects. In addition, two local architects, Sarah Kleiner and Yan Nasilevich, visited and gave advice to the students.