Aylesbury High School students ‘well-deserved’ winners in green home design competition

How will we live in the future? What can we do to make our homes more sustainable? These were some of the questions put to Year 8 Aylesbury High School students by local housing association Fairhive Homes (formerly the Vale of Aylesbury Housing Trust).

The joint venture, set up through a partnership with Bucks Skills Hub, challenged students to design a home for the future.

Over a six-week period, the students aged 12 and 13 worked in teams to design a home that would be comfortable and practical to live in, feasible to build, energy efficient and as environmentally friendly as possible.

They were inspired by talks from a range of professionals, including a zero-carbon specialist and a chartered surveyor.

The winners were Anushri and Padmasri, who designed a fully customisable home with a wide range of sustainable and innovative features.

As well as energy generation through mini wind turbines and solar panels, their home used sustainable materials such as bamboo and hemp. The judges were also impressed by their use of computer design modelling and their proposal to partner with international high-tech companies.

Head of Year 8, Sarah Sheppard, said: “The students enjoyed getting stuck in to this project, working together to create really thought-provoking designs. I know the judges were suitably impressed by their submissions, which only made their job of picking a winner so much harder.

"Well done to all my students for their dedication and innovation and congratulations to the winners – well deserved.”

Anushri and Padmasri were presented with shopping vouchers, plus a wildlife camera for the school Earth Club.

Fairhive executive director, Julie Porter, said: “As a large landlord and developer, we were keen to work with Aylesbury High School again to find new ways of inspiring students to think about future careers, and we’re grateful to Bucks Skills Hub for asking us to get involved.

“The housebuilding industry is going through a period of change and the new homes we build have to be more sustainable with less impact to the environment.

"By encouraging the next generation to think about future housing design we introduced them to alternative career options, ways to protect our planet, as well as having fun and coming up with some exciting designs.”