By Spencer Ball
Staff Writer

Junior Joe Derrico had won the annual CAD, or computer-aided design, contest on April 9. To win this competition, Dericco had to design a house, right down to the last square foot.
There is a great amount of time and planning that goes into creating the final product. This is what junior Joe Dericco has been doing for the past school year. He’s been designing a house using Revit, a CAD, program.
The goal for Dericco was to build an efficient house for the plot of land he and his peers were given to work with, and win a chance to get your design built in real life if it makes it to, and wins, the competition.

The entire process began at the beginning of the school year, when a lot was purchased off of Camp McDonald Road in Prospect Heights. Tim Schaap, Technical Education teacher, described what criteria is needed every year for the students.
“Every year the lot is different. Like last year [the house] was two stories. It changes every year depending on the lot size. If the lot is small, you got to go up. If you have a monster lot, you can do a nice ranch, and then people don’t have to climb stairs.”
The students in Project Lead the Way, Civil Architectural Engineering, and the Advanced Architecture classes compete in the competition to have their design be used for the house.
In addition to Prospect, all five of the other schools in the district compete. From those competing hundreds of drawings are submitted. Each school then has to choose their top five students based on their designs.

Prospect’s were junior Alexandra Zach, senior Tim Angerame, senior Joe Abu-Bakr, junior David Kendziera, and competition winner junior Joe Dericco.

    The sketches are then brought to the Forest View Educational Center, and out of the 30 total from the six schools, they narrow them down to about 13.
Dericco then went to present his design on April 9, and the results came back the next day that he had gained the honor of having his design to be used for the construction of a sheltering home.
However, Dericco did not come up with his award winning design overnight. He went through countless hours preparing for the event.
“I researched things from energy efficient design to handicapped accessibility,” Dericco said. “[I did] a lot of in-depth research before I even started the design.”
Dericco had also competed last year, and he had many reasons to take on the challenge of creating the design once again.
He said, “I knew from last year that it was really interesting. It was challenging, but it was fun, so I decided that I was totally up to do it again this year.”
When Dericco heard the news that his design was to be used, he had a mix of different feelings.
“I was surprised, but I also felt that all my hard work had paid off, like all the researching and all the hours spent designing.,” Dericco said. “I felt accomplished.”