LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — When school starts back in less than a week, a group of students at Lafayette High School will have a new piece of hardware to show off. It’s a first-place trophy, and it belongs to students on the Lafayette ACE Architectural Design Team.
“This is a museum that we made,” said Jackson Kennedy, pointing to a model building.
Kennedy is about to start his first year at the University of Kentucky, and he’s one of the six members on the team each have their own passion for architecture.
“I wanted to be an engineer and I went into architecture and I fell in love with it,” said Ty Sampson, a rising senior.
Brogan McBride is also about to begin his first year at UK. “I fell in love with the idea of being somebody behind a building and designing everything that goes into it,” McBride said.
The team takes part in the Technology Student Association’ competition in Architectural design. In September, the group learned that their prompt was to design a museum.
“We wanted to base it around Kentucky because that's where we live and we're proud of where we live,” Kennedy said. “It's the Kentucky Cultural Museum. Every exhibit in there is a rotating exhibit which will use art and different sculptures from Kentucky artists depicting different aspects of Kentucky history, culture, things like that.”
Kennedy and the team gathered around, revisiting their design process.
“Pol asked what he could do one day, and I said, ‘Oh, stop signs would be great,’ and then Mr. Steele was like, ‘no, don't waste your time on that,’” Kennedy shared. “So Pol printed the stop signs, and then we got compliments on those from several people at the national competition.’”
The team made it to the national conference in Nashville, TN. After months of hard work, the team’s design took the top spot on the podium.
“There was so much release like that entire week,” Sampson said.
Rising junior Pol Marti shared, “as it got closer, more and more tension, and then when I finally heard that we got in first place, it was almost like it just all went away.”
“It's a lot of bragging rights,” McBride added. “It feels really good and it feels like very accomplished to say that we were the best in the country at one point.”
Among the awards, team member Nate Knowles placed second in the nation for CAD Architecture. The Lafayette team competed against more than 8,000 students from 48 other states and four countries at nationals, beating out schools from Texas and Pennsylvania to earn first place.
