Design Your Own Office Building

Connie Sargent and Ryan Kimbro

Driving Question: Can you design an office building that will benefit your community?

Targeted Grade Level and Class: Sophomore Geometry Class

Project Description: Students will be put into groups of three or four to design an office building of their choosing. This building must include four offices, room for four secretaries, a waiting area, and a conference room. The building will be built on an acre of land which must include area for a parking lot. Specific building specifications will be issued by the teacher. Each group will be required to create a drawing, to-scale, to present to a guest judge who will determine if their office building is feasible.

Background Information: This unit of study introduces students to basic geometry skills and requires the students to apply this knowledge to build their own office building. The unit will cover properties of triangles, special right triangles, Pythagorean Theorem, ratios, proportions, surface area, volume, slope, mid-point, distance and the equation of a line in a five week time period and there is plenty of adjustment room if you wish to add any additional information to this unit of study. The specifications for the building are not set in stone and can be changed as frequently as needed based on what the teacher would like to emphasize. If the guest judge is a city inspector or architect, they can even add their own requirement to the guidelines for if they wish to add their own twist to the project.