Carter Williamson was involved in the tutoring and judging of sustainable house designs and models produced by the students as part of the STEM program.

This relationship led to the installation of an Educational Model of GRID, our pre-fabricated sustainable housing solution, in the school to deepen the students understanding of what it means to be sustainable.

In this application, GRID was known to the students as ‘Sustainable House’.

GRID is not a shipping container, or refrigeration panels. It has material and spatial quality that separate it from other prefabricated buildings on the school grounds. Above all GRID is joy. It is our hope that this will inspire the students, encourage them to think more sustainably, and lead to a demand for better pre-fabricated classrooms.

GRID Sustainable House was installed one Saturday morning, and will be formally opened by the school with a special event where the schools string quartet will play. Sustainable House will be used as part of the STEM program to engage the students in sustainability, and challenge the typical notion of home, as well as a classroom.

GRID offers a tangible 1:1 model, which the students can engage with to supplement current sustainability principles taught in the curriculum.

In a world increasingly challenged by man-made and natural disasters, GRID was initially developed as a sustainable housing prototype, which can be assembled quickly and transported cheaply and easily to diverse and remote locations. This same methodology has been applied here in an education setting where quick and efficient construction reduces the impact on students and school grounds.

True to its claims, the prototype, gradually refined was recently assembled on site in one Saturday morning (repeat). In community contexts, GRID can be arrayed in different configurations to respond to the specific contextual and administrative requirements of family, culture or work.