Designing Desert Digs
Posted on July 26th, 2018 by Mary Lord
High school students design a permanent guest village within the Saguaro National Park in Arizona after studying the desert ecology. Their designs must provide a true desert experience for visitors while emphasizing sustainable design, protecting the natural environment, and conserving energy and resources.
Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 9-12, Lesson Plans | Comments Off on Designing Desert Digs
Tags: bio-inspired design, Biomimicry, Class Activities, cooling, desert, eco-village, ecology, Energy, Engineering Design Process, environment, Environmental Engineering, Grades 9-12, habitat, heat, Lesson Plan, Saguaro National Park, shelter, solar power, Sustainability, tourist village
Middle school students learn about the engineering design process by building a model of an innovative human shelter inspired and informed by an animal habitat. They then present their work, explaining what attribute of the animal structure influenced their design. 
In this first of eight activities, students in grades 6 – 8 learn about the engineering design process and earth science by beginning to design an underground cavern that can shelter people for one year after an asteroid strike makes Earth uninhabitable.
