TeenTech challenges schools to design ‘City of Tomorrow’

Schoolchildren and teachers have been encouraged to start thinking about smart buildings as part of the movement to help young teenagers see career possibilities in science, engineering and technology.

TeenTech aims to help young people understand the opportunities in the science, technology and engineering industries, and has begun to scale up its City of Tomorrow Challenge after pilots in Barnsley and Doncaster.

Any school in the UK can take part in the challenge, which tasks students with designing one building to live in; and designing a public building for one of a range of purposes, including social, sport, education or health.

Around 3,000 students have already become involved. The designs for the buildings use recycled materials, and that they meet at least three of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals. If they reach the regional events they are given insights into a range of different careers in the sector.

Speaking at the Smart Places & Connected Communities event, staged by UKAuthority and Microsoft, Maggie Philbin, chief executive officer of TeenTech and former presenter of Tomorrow’s World on BBC TV, said:

“We’re encouraging students to have a vision on what the future city should look like,” she said, adding: “We want young people and schools to understand that technology is not something that is siloed into computer science.

“It is something that everyone needs to be across, so helping every teacher understand that they need to embed digital skills in their teaching is very important.”

Microsoft, one of the sponsors, has supported a range of mini-projects for students to help them develop digital and technical skills.