Engineering 2 Dream Houses

Room 162 at Brewster High School hums with the sound of 3-D printers. Students work alone or together, standing up or sitting at their desks. Teacher Mike Trainor moves from student to student answering questions and giving tips.

This is Brewster High School’s  Engineering 2 class, and its participants are busy designing and 3-D printing their dream houses. 

“My house is massive,” said Sean Condon, “it’s got two swimming pools-one mini, one olympic sized–a bowling alley, bar, an ice-skating rink, and a room for a jumbotron.”

As he explains his mansion, he toggles around his house design on the computer platform On Design. There are levels and stairways that he flips for a side view and then a view from above.

“I have 3-D printed projects at home and definitely want to work with 3-D modeling,” he said. “This class has been great because I am learning how to measure and plan everything out beforehand–how to sketch and problem solve in advance of printing.”

The dream house project puts the student in the role of a civil engineer. They are tasked with budgeting the project, creating a spreadsheet, asking questions like whether a well will need to be drilled and what type of foundation, and then designing a floor plan for a new construction dream house with three floors.

As each project takes about 9 hours of printing and there are only two 3-D printers in the classroom, students are in various stages of their dream home project. The first floor of Joseph Huff’s house is finished and he is working on designing the second floor and basement. The first-floor model includes a round shape for a turret, a large square for a family room, two rectangular shape cut outs for staircases, and 10 window cutouts. 

“For me, the hardest part of designing was putting in the windows and doors. We also had to think about scale. I measured my home in feet and then converted it into inches for purposes of the 3-D printer,” said Huff.

“I designed my home on my actual home,” said Billy Pappas, “so it’s been fun to work on. I have two floors printed out and still need to print out the basement and roof. I think it turned out great.”

Other students–Daniel Knowle and Nick Napolitano–are working on budgeting out their home projects.

“We have to calculate out how much everything is going to cost. So we have to figure out how much concrete and wood we are going to need and then go online and price it out,” said Daniel.