Sustainable Design Challenge Prizes Awarded to Students from Six Local Schools

The 13th annual Sustainable Design Challenge took place on Tuesday, April 16th and featured over 30 student groups from eight DuPage County high schools displaying sustainable building models. In partnership with DuPage County Stormwater Management, SCARCE coordinates the annual event, which encourages students to construct building and landscape models using environmental and water-friendly design practices. Local professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields served as judges during the event, evaluating the students’ designs, presentations and innovation.

Winners were honored at the monthly DuPage County Stormwater Committee meeting on May 7th and presented with cash awards thanks to our business sponsors: Wight & Company, Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Skender, Perkins+Will, Tom Bassett-Dilley Architects, and Hey and Associates. This diverse group of local high school students showed exceptional research, innovation and attention to detail in the sustainable building projects they created.

“It’s an honor for myself, along with other DuPage County Board members, to recognize all of the hard work the students and teachers put into these designs,” said DuPage County Stormwater Management Committee Chairman Jim Zay. “I was thoroughly impressed by all of the projects this year, and especially by those awarded today.” 

The winning groups were:

Overall LEED Design Award: Ben Fusco and Chiara Biddle, Glenbard East High School

Best Stormwater Design: Paulina Stachura, Addison Trail High School

Best Energy Efficiency Design: Milosh Dragojevic, Adrian Zhuang, Ariela Asllani, and Paul Nicoli, York Community High School

Honorable mentions were presented to the following groups:

As part of the program, students also had the opportunity to learn about sustainable infrastructure first-hand from engineering and design professionals as they toured features and buildings on the DuPage County campus in Wheaton. During a zero-waste lunch, students were addressed by DuPage County Stormwater Management Committee Chair Jim Zay. This year also featured speakers Bill Foster and Sean Casten, two of Illinois’ congressional representatives, who shared how their science backgrounds have informed their careers. Later students got to explore careers in engineering, architecture, and design with local professionals representing the Sustainable Design Challenge business sponsors.

Check out more photos from the event:

Get Involved

DuPage County high school teachers and their students are encouraged to get involved in this fantastic extracurricular STEAM  education opportunity. To learn more, visit www.scarce.org/sustainable-design or contact [email protected].

Local businesses in the fields of engineering, architecture and design can learn more about getting involved here.

A program of:

Thank you to our 2019 Business Sponsors