Crossroads News
Students Help Design Element of Science Building
Projects Pavilion Will Feature Students’ Handiwork
Students from all three divisions took part in crafting a unique element of the Science Education & Research Facility currently under construction in the Alley. The 25,000-square-foot facility will include a two-story Special Projects Pavilion, whose surrounding walls will be embedded with horizontal strips of rocks, petrified wood and fossils, resembling excavated strata of earth. Some of these horizontal rock/fossil embedments were designed by students from the second grade, the Middle School Options course Construction and two new Upper School clubs: Architecture, Design & Engineering and Construction.
Students visited the Science Building construction office, where they worked with Project Manager Elaine Nesbit to study and choose the artifacts they would be using. The students created intricate designs of geological remnants, including geodes, stalagmite and stalactite cave formations, petrified wood, fossilized shark teeth, ammonites and coprolite. The latter artifact—which is fossilized dinosaur dung—was particularly fascinating to the younger students.
On Nov. 14, the construction crew began placing the objects in the pavilion wall by hand, carefully following the student rock/fossil designs. The pavilion walls are being specially constructed using Shotcrete, a concrete pneumatically projected at high velocity through a hose. The student-designed rock and fossil strata are now permanently embedded within the building.
