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Derby Academy Hard Hat Tour: Connecting classroom learning to the real world

February 18th, 2014 by Ashley Buckley

Recently Derby Academy, in Hingham, MA, hosted an educational ‘hard hat’ tour of the school’s new Innovation Center for students, which is now complete. Students of all ages visited the construction site and wore construction hats to go through the building. C.E. Floyd and Olson Lewis + Architects worked together to create an interactive experience for all ages by demonstrating connections between the skills students learn in the classroom with the real world applications of them in the construction site.

Derby students have been witnessing the development of the school’s Innovation Center, and the Hard Hat tour appealed to their curiosity about the building and its designers.

The presentation began with a project overview to communicate the steps from development to construction, and the students saw the initial sketches, detailed floor plans, and 3D renderings. The second part of the presentation was more interactive and looked at the specific elements of the structure. Hands-on demonstrations with a scale mock-up of a truss showed how the building elements perform to create a complete structure.

Chris Floyd noted, “It was a lot of fun to connect Derby Academy’s curriculum to the technical principals applied while building the Innovation Center. The evident curiosity and interest in construction was inspiring.”